Name: A Nice Mackerel Pie
Ingredients: 3 mackerel; parsley, to taste; fennel, to taste; pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; ½ pound butter; ½ cup water; pie crust

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 ↓

A Nice Mackerel Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Clean and gut the mackerel, removing heads and tails, then cut each into four pieces.
Season the mackerel pieces with parsley, fennel, pepper, and salt.
Place the seasoned mackerel in a dish.
Roll the butter in flour and place it in lumps on top of the mackerel.
Add the water to the dish, then cover with a pie crust.

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).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Fennel + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,216 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).