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To Broil Mackerel, White Fish, Small Bhie-fish, Trout, Small Cod, Shad, or Any Other Thin Fish

A method for broiling various thin fish, seasoning with salt, pepper, butter, and optional lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Broil Mackerel, White Fish, Small Bhie-fish, Trout, Small Cod, Shad, or Any Other Thin Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Split the fish down the back and remove the head and tail.

  2. For thick fish like halibut and salmon, cut into 1‑inch slices and remove skin and bone.

  3. For flounder and bass, cut into fillets or natural divisions.

  4. Season oily fish with salt and pepper.

  5. Spread soft butter on dry fish.

  6. Grease a double wire broiler with salt pork rind.

  7. Place the thickest edge of the fish in the middle of the broiler.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the fish flesh side first until brown, lifting often to prevent burning.

  2. Cook the other side just enough to crisp the skin.

  3. Check that the flesh is white, firm, and separates easily from the bone.

  4. Loosen the fish from the broiler.

  5. Open the fish and slide it off, or hold a platter over the skin side and invert the platter and broiler together.

  6. Season with butter, salt, pepper, and lemon juice if desired.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 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
Oily fish whose rich flesh stays moist and flavourful under high heat.
Soft butter
Coats the dry fish to add richness and help the surface brown evenly.
Salt pork rind
Greases the wire broiler so the fish does not stick, adding a little savoury fat.

The step that matters

Broil flesh side first until brown, lifting often. Fish flesh is delicate and sticks and burns quickly under intense direct heat. Lifting the fish often lets the surface brown without scorching or tearing, and the flesh turns opaque and firm as its proteins set.

“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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