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Mackerel Aux Fines Herbes

A whole mackerel is seasoned, stuffed with fresh herbs, and baked until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mackerel Aux Fines Herbes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Clean and gut the mackerel, removing any innards.

  3. Rinse the fish under cold water and pat dry.

  4. Rub the mackerel inside and out with olive oil, salt, and pepper.

  5. Chop the fresh herbs and stuff them inside the fish.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the mackerel on a baking sheet and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until cooked through.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Thyme + olivetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,948 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mackerel
Forms the main body of the dish and provides rich, oily flesh that cooks through in the oven.
Fresh herbs
Add aroma and fresh, green flavour that perfumes the fish from inside as it bakes.
Olive oil
Carries seasoning over the fish surface and helps keep the flesh moist during baking.

The step that matters

Baking until cooked through. Fish cooks quickly, and overbaking dries out the delicate flesh. Checking for flakiness at the low end of the time range helps keep it moist.

Swap the chive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, thyme, olive, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Chivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, thyme, olive, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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