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Fried mackerel coated in cornmeal served with a lemon mustard butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean, wash, and wipe the inside of the mackerel.

  2. Cut the mackerel.

  3. Season the mackerel with salt and pepper.

  4. Roll the mackerel in cornmeal.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the mackerel in hot lard until cooked.

  2. Drain the mackerel and serve hot.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine boiling water, lemon juice, mustard, and butter mixed with browned flour.

  2. Boil the sauce once and serve in a gravy boat.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mackerel
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to flaky, tender flesh in the hot fat.
Cornmeal
Forms a crisp, golden coating that protects the fish while it fries.
Browned flour
Thickens the sauce and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich fish and butter sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the mackerel in hot lard until cooked. If the fat is not hot enough, the cornmeal coating absorbs grease and turns soggy instead of crisp. Hot fat seals the coating quickly so the fish cooks through without becoming oily.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, lemon, butter, flour. 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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