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Fennel and Butter for Mackerel, &C

A butter sauce flavored with fennel, parsley, mint, and onions, served over mackerel or boiled soles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Fennel and parsley 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 ↓

Fennel and Butter for Mackerel, &C

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a pan.

  2. Add equal parts of finely chopped fennel and parsley.

  3. If desired, add a sprig of mint and minced young onions.

  4. Cook until fragrant and well combined.

Serve

  1. Serve over mackerel or boiled soles.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Parsley + minttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,198 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Fennel + minttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together168 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  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

What each ingredient does

Fennel
Provides the sauce's main aromatic flavour, with a light anise note.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma and balances the fennel's strong flavour.
Butter
Carries the herb flavours and gives the sauce a rich, smooth body.

Swap the mint

The recipe marks mint as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fennel, parsley, onion, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Mintthe original

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

“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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