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Salt Mackerel Stewed with Cream

A stew of salted mackerel cooked in cream with a flour‑butter gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Salt Mackerel Stewed with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the mackerel in warm water overnight.

  2. Cook the mackerel in a shallow pan with enough water to cover it for 15 minutes.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Drain the mackerel and cover it with milk or cream.

  2. Once cooked, place the mackerel on a platter.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix flour with a little butter until smooth, then add to the pan to thicken the gravy.

  4. Add pepper to taste and pour the gravy over the fish.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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
Provides the main fish, which turns tender and flaky as it cooks gently in liquid.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and a rich, smooth body to the gravy.
Flour
Its starch swells in the hot liquid and thickens the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and coating the flour helps it blend smoothly.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter mixture to the pan. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid dry or unevenly. Mixing it smooth with butter first lets the starch disperse, so it thickens the gravy evenly as it heats.

“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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