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Boiled Salt Mackerel

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

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, then soak it meat side down in cold water overnight.

  2. In the morning, rinse the fish in 1 or 2 changes of water.

Cook the fish

  1. Wrap the mackerel in a cloth and place it in a kettle with enough cold water to cover it.

  2. Cook the mackerel for about 30 minutes.

  3. Carefully remove the fish from the cloth and take out the back bones.

  4. Pour melted butter and cream over the fish.

  5. Sprinkle the fish with pepper.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Heat the milk until scalding.

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

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

  4. Beat the egg lightly.

  5. Gradually pour the sauce over the egg, stirring for 1 minute over low heat.

  6. Pour the sauce over the fish.

  7. Serve garnished with lemon slices, 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

Salt mackerel
Main protein, which becomes firm and flaky when gently cooked in water.
Milk
Forms the body of the sauce and gives it a creamy, smooth texture.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Egg
Enriches the sauce and thickens it slightly when gently warmed while stirring.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavor to both the fish and the sauce.

The step that matters

Pouring the sauce over the egg. Adding the hot sauce slowly while stirring warms the egg gradually, so its proteins thicken smoothly instead of scrambling into lumps.

“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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