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Mackerel Pie

A pie of cleaned mackerel pieces seasoned with fennel, pepper and salt, layered with butter, forcemeat balls and a top crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mackerel Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the mackerel, remove the heads and tails, and cut each fish into four pieces.

  2. Rub the pieces with chopped fennel, pepper, and salt.

  3. Toss the mackerel in butter and let it cool.

  4. Sprinkle the cooled fish with pounded sugar.

Assemble and bake

  1. Lay the fish in a dish on slices of fresh butter.

  2. Add forcemeat balls made with chopped oysters, bread-crumbs, spices, and eggs.

  3. Cover with a top crust.

  4. Bake gently at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Fennel + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,216 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mackerel
Forms the main filling and becomes tender and flaky as it bakes gently.
Eggs
Bind the forcemeat balls so they hold their shape in the pie.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the fish and the dish.
Pounded loaf sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the salt and rich fish.

The step that matters

Let the mackerel cool before layering. Adding sugar and layering while the fish is still hot can cause the butter to melt out and make the filling greasy and loose. Cooling keeps the fat in place during baking.

Swap the fennel

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Fennelthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, sugar, oyster, bread, egg. 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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