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Grilled Mackerel

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Fennel and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 723 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Grilled Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Clean the mackerel and split them down the back.

  2. Rub the mackerel with butter.

  3. Wrap the mackerel in green fennel leaves and broil them.

  4. Make a sauce by combining browned butter, flour, minced sweet herbs, grated nutmeg, vinegar, coarse sea salt, finely chopped onion, and green gooseberries.

  5. Serve the mackerel garnished with slices of lemon.

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. Fennel + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together723 recipes

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

  2. Fennel + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together96 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Fennel + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,096 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, fennel, flour, nutmeg, vinegar, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, fennel, flour, nutmeg, vinegar, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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