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Salt Mackerel

Salted mackerel soaked, boiled, baked, and served with butter, pepper, lemon slices, or fish sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Salt Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Desalt the fish

  1. Soak the mackerel in lukewarm water for a few hours, changing the water several times.

  2. Tie the fish loosely in cloths and place in cold water.

  3. Bring the water to a boil.

  4. Turn off the heat and pour hot water over the fish from a kettle.

  5. Let it come to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the fish and drain.

  2. Lay the fish on a platter.

  3. Butter and pepper the fish.

  4. Place the fish in the oven for a few moments.

  5. Serve with sliced lemons or a nice fish sauce.

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

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  4. Butter + fish saucetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together141 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + fish saucetop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together551 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt mackerel
Is the main fish; soaking and poaching reduce its salt while keeping it moist and tender.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the surface feel silky.
Sliced lemons
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury fish.

The step that matters

Pouring hot water over the fish after the heat is off. The fish should be gently heated, not boiled hard again. Too much heat can toughen the flesh and firm it unevenly, so keep the fish in hot water rather than returning the pot to a rolling boil.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, fish sauce. 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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