Name: Baked Mackerel
Ingredients: Mackerel; 1 Lemon; Chopped Parsley; Thyme; Bay Leaf; Bread Crumbs; Butter

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Baked Mackerel

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Prepare the mackerel by removing the bones.
Melt some butter in a pan and place the fish flat in it, skin side down.
Chop parsley very fine and add powdered thyme, a quarter of a bay leaf, and a little grated lemon rind.
Cover the fish well with pieces of butter.

Bake and serve

Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 to 30 minutes.
Squeeze the juice of the lemon over the fish before serving.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,973 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Coats the fish and browns in the oven, adding richness and moisture to the flesh.
Bread crumbs: Forms a crisp, browned crust over the fish as it bakes.
Lemon: Its rind adds aroma and its juice adds acidity that brightens the rich fish.

“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.