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Boiled Salt Mackerel

A boiled salted mackerel served with a creamy sauce and garnished with lemon and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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. In the morning, rinse the fish in one or two changes of water.

Cook the fish

  1. Wrap the mackerel in a cloth.

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

  3. Cook the mackerel for about 30 minutes.

  4. Carefully remove the fish from the cloth.

  5. Take out the backbones.

  6. 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 to heat and stir for one minute.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish.

  2. Serve garnished with lemon slices or sprigs of parsley or watercress.

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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mackerel
Provides the main flesh, which soaking and rinsing mellow from its salt-cured state.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth fat that carries flavour through the dish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a creamy body.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth sauce as its starch swells with heat.
Egg
Enriches the sauce and helps it set to a richer, more velvety texture.

The step that matters

Pouring the sauce over the egg. The egg must be warmed gradually by the hot sauce, or it will scramble. Returning the mixture to heat for a minute then lets the starch fully thicken and the egg set smoothly.

“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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