Why it works: Fennel and butter work together. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 647 recipes. Both carry anethole, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓
To Boil Mackerel
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Clean the mackerel by opening it and removing the insides carefully.
Wash the mackerel and the roes delicately.
Fill a pot with cold water and add a generous amount of coarse sea salt.
Boil and serve
Place the mackerel in the pot and bring the water to a gentle boil.
Simmer the mackerel for 15 to 20 minutes, skimming off any scum that rises.
Remove the mackerel when the tails split and the eyes start to bulge.
Serve the mackerel on a napkin with fennel or gooseberry sauce and melted butter.
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.
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Fennel + buttertop 27% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together647 recipes
Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Mackerel
- Is the main protein, cooking gently in salted water until flaky and tender.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the cooking water so the fish is lightly seasoned as it cooks.
The step that matters
Simmer gently without a hard boil. A rolling boil breaks up the delicate flesh and can toughen it, so keep the water at a gentle simmer and skim off scum as it rises.
“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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