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Fresh Grilled Mackerel with Pimms on a Warm Lentil Salad with Garlic- and Fig-roasted Nuts

Try marinating fresh mackerel in this fruity marinade before grilling for an unusual supper for two.

By bbcfood · From Open Recipes · 28 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and nuts work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and 154 recipes mention both. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 2
Cook30 min

Ingredients

Contains: tree nuts, soy (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By bbcfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

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. Fig + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together154 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  2. Olive + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together23,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Mustard + lentilstop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanol (resin, flower).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Olive + pinetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,027 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Vinegar and mustard share little aroma chemistry, yet 14,067 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fig, vinegar, olive, pepper, lentils, pine, nuts):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  3. Lettucebetter flavor fit
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, vinegar, olive, pepper, lentils, pine, nuts. 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).