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Boiled Salt Mackerel

A boiled salted mackerel served with a cream sauce and garnished with lemon, parsley, or watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Salt Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the mackerel to remove brine and salt.

  2. Soak the mackerel meat side down in cold water overnight.

  3. Rinse the fish in one or two changes of water.

  4. Wrap the mackerel in a cloth.

  5. Place the wrapped mackerel in a kettle with cold water.

  6. Cook for about 30 minutes.

  7. Carefully unwrap the fish.

  8. Remove the back bones.

  9. Pour melted butter and cream over the fish, sprinkling with pepper.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk until scalding.

  2. Stir in the cornstarch mixed with a little water until thickened.

  3. Add butter, pepper, salt, and chopped parsley to taste.

  4. Beat the egg lightly.

  5. Gradually pour the sauce over the egg.

  6. Return the mixture to the heat and stir for one minute.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish.

  2. Garnish with lemon slices, parsley, or watercress 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.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt mackerel
Provides the main flesh, which is salted and must be soaked and rinsed to become mild.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the fish and sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the fish finish.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, giving it body and a mild, creamy flavour.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Egg
Enriches and thickens the sauce, adding body and a custard-like smoothness.

The step that matters

Gradually pour the sauce over the egg. Adding hot sauce to the egg slowly, while stirring, warms the egg gently. Pouring too fast can scramble it into lumps, so the sauce stays smooth when returned to the heat.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, pepper, milk, egg, lemon. 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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