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Salt Mackerel with Prepared Butter

A boiled mackerel served with a butter, pepper, lemon, and parsley mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Salt Mackerel with Prepared Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the mackerel, skin side up, in cold water for 12 hours.

  2. Wash the mackerel carefully and place it in a large, deep frying pan.

Cook the fish

  1. Cover the fish with cold water and bring to a boil.

  2. Reduce heat and let it simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the fish to a hot dish.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter with pepper, lemon, and parsley until creamy.

  2. Spread the butter mixture over the fish and garnish with parsley greens.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 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 + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Mackerel
Provides the main body of the dish, cooked gently in simmering water until flaky.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, melting over the hot fish to coat it.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma that brightens the rich butter.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after the boil. Once the water reaches a boil, lowering the heat to a gentle simmer keeps the fish tender. A hard rolling boil can toughen the proteins and break the fish apart.

“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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