Name: Cold Boiled Mackerel with Green Mayonnaise Sauce
Ingredients: cold boiled mackerel; mayonnaise sauce; chopped parsley; sprigs of parsley; sprigs of fennel; young crayfish

Why it works: Parsley and fennel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 625 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Cold Boiled Mackerel with Green Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the skin and bones from the cold boiled mackerel.
Flake the flesh using two forks and pile it onto a dish.
Prepare a thick mayonnaise sauce and mix it with plenty of chopped parsley that has been scalded.
Pour the mayonnaise sauce over the mackerel.
Garnish with sprigs of parsley, fennel, and place a young crayfish on top.

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.

Parsley + fenneltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together625 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Sauce + crayfishtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together195 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Fennel + crayfishtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Parsley + crayfishtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together159 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Sauce + parsleytop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,693 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).