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Broiled Mackerel

Broiled mackerel seasoned with salt, pepper, oil, and served with a parsley butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Broiled Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the gills and insides from the mackerel.

  2. Wipe the fish clean and dry.

  3. Open the back of the fish.

  4. Season the fish with pepper, salt, and a little oil.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the mackerel over a clear fire, turning it on both sides and the back.

  2. Cook for about 10 minutes until the flesh separates from the bone.

  3. Mix chopped parsley with butter, pepper, salt, and a squeeze of lemon juice.

  4. Place the mixture in the back of the fish.

  5. Serve immediately before the butter melts.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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; its oily flesh stays moist and rich under high heat.
Butter
Melts into the fish to add richness and moisture, carrying the parsley and lemon flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, oily fish and the butter.

The step that matters

Cook for about 10 minutes until the flesh separates from the bone. Fish cooks quickly and dries out if overdone; flesh that flakes away from the bone is a sign it is cooked through, while stopping earlier leaves it raw near the bone.

“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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