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Maquereau a LA Normande

Mackerel à la Normande is a baked mackerel coated with a breadcrumb and herb mixture, served with butter and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 9,057 recipes mention both. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Split the mackerel open along the back and remove the bone, head, and tail.

  2. Butter a flat baking tin and lay the fish skin side down.

Make the topping

  1. Mix the bread crumbs with parsley, thyme, pepper, and salt, then add the chopped shallot.

  2. Sprinkle the mixture thickly over the fish and dot the bread crumbs with small pieces of butter.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

  2. Serve with melted butter mixed with a little vinegar and browned with caramel.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,145 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Parsley + shallottop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,718 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 carries the flavour of the topping.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust over the fish as they bake and absorb the butter.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the crumbs brown and the fish stay tender.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sweet onion-like aroma that deepens the savoury topping.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that cuts the richness of the melted butter served with the fish.

The step that matters

Dot the bread crumbs with butter. Butter melts and carries heat into the crumbs, so they brown evenly and stay moist rather than drying out in the hot oven.

Flavor stand-ins for the shallot

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  3. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, parsley, thyme, pepper, butter, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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