Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Salt Mackerel

A boiled salt mackerel served with hard‑boiled eggs and drawn butter, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Boiled Salt Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Freshen the salt mackerel by soaking it in water.

Cook and serve

  1. Wrap the mackerel in a cloth and simmer for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the mackerel and slice the hard-boiled eggs over it.

  3. Pour drawn butter or a dressing made with a little milk and flour over the mackerel.

  4. Garnish with parsley leaves.

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

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

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 fish flavour and firm, flaky flesh once cooked.
Eggs
Add richness and body to the dish when sliced over the fish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce poured over the mackerel.
Milk and flour
Thicken the dressing into a smooth, creamy sauce that coats the fish.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes