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Fried Mackerel

A fried mackerel prepared by cutting, flaking, flouring, salting, and frying in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the head of the mackerel.

  2. Split the fish open along the belly, keeping the backbone intact.

  3. Lay the fish flat.

Cook

  1. Dust the fish with flour and coarse sea salt.

  2. Fry the fish in butter until cooked through.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mackerel
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the rich, oily flesh that is cooked through.
Flour
Creates a light coating that helps the skin crisp and brown during frying.
Butter
Conducts heat around the fish and adds browning and a rich flavour as it fries.

The step that matters

Frying the fish in butter until cooked through. Butter browns at a lower temperature than oil, so it can scorch before the thick flesh is cooked. Keeping the heat moderate and checking the thickest part helps the fish cook through while the coating turns golden.

“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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