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Mackerel a LA Maitre D'hotel

Mackerel à la Maître d'Hôtel is a whole mackerel seasoned, buttered, and baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and 85,512 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and dry the mackerel with a cloth.

  2. Make a deep incision on either side of the backbone.

  3. Season the inside with salt, cayenne, and 1 tablespoon of butter.

Grill

  1. Heat a double gridiron and rub it with butter or suet.

  2. Place the mackerel inside down on the gridiron and cook until browned.

  3. Turn the fish and cook until done.

Finish and serve

  1. Fill the incisions with 2 tablespoons of Maitre d'Hôtel butter.

  2. Transfer the mackerel to a hot dish and spread 2 more tablespoons of butter on top.

  3. Place in the oven for a few minutes and serve very hot.

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.

  1. Pepper + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together85,512 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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, and its flesh cooks to a firm, flaky texture.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the fish brown on the gridiron.
Maitre d'hotel butter
Adds herb and lemon flavour and moisture as it melts into the opened fish.

The step that matters

Turning the fish and cooking until done. Fish flesh firms and dries out as its proteins set with heat. Cooking until the flesh turns opaque and just flakes, rather than by fixed time, keeps it moist.

“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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