Name: To Broil Mackerel
Ingredients: Mackerel; Pepper; Coarse sea salt; Fresh mint, chopped fine; Fresh parsley, chopped fine; Fennel, chopped fine; Flour; Butter

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 ↓

To Broil Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Clean the mackerel and split them down the back.
Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, mint, parsley, and fennel.
Dust with flour.
Broil until lightly browned.
Place on a serving dish.
Garnish with parsley and serve with melted butter.

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).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,198 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + fenneltop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,216 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Mint + fenneltop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together168 recipes

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

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

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, parsley, fennel, flour, butter):

Tarragonfits better
Thymefits better
Dillfits better
Mintthe original

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