Name: Mackerel Baked
Ingredients: 4 large mackerel or 6 small mackerel; coarse sea salt; black pepper; butter; anchovy sauce; ketchup; potato chips

Why it works: Sauce and potato chip share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 18 recipes mention both. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Clean and trim the mackerel, removing bones.
Lay the fish in a baking dish or on a bed of potato chips.
Dust the fish with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Season and bake

Place a few pieces of butter on the potatoes.
Sprinkle the fish with a diluted mixture of anchovy sauce and ketchup.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Sauce + potato chiptop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together18 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,099 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,048 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together470 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + anchovytop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together3,672 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mackerel: The fish forms the main body of the dish and becomes flaky and moist as it bakes.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture, and helps the potato chips brown as they cook.
Anchovy sauce: Contributes salty, savoury depth that seasons the fish from the surface.
Ketchup: Adds sweetness and acidity, and helps the surface caramelise lightly in the oven.
Potato chips: Form a bed under the fish that absorbs drippings and crisps as it bakes.

“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.