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Fried Salt Mackerel

Fried salt mackerel is a fish dish prepared by soaking, drying, coating in flour, frying in butter, and serving with melted butter and parsley.

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 Salt Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the salt mackerel well and soak in cold water all day, changing the water every few hours.

  2. In the morning, drain the water and wipe the mackerel dry.

  3. Roll the mackerel in flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the mackerel in butter until golden brown.

  2. Serve with melted butter poured over the mackerel and garnish with parsley.

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).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Salt mackerel
Main protein, seasoned by its long soak that draws out excess salt.
Flour
Forms a thin dry coating that helps the surface brown and crisp in the fat.
Butter
Frying fat that browns the surface and adds rich flavour, then serves as sauce.

The step that matters

Drain and wipe the mackerel dry before flouring. Surface moisture makes the flour pasty and steams the fish instead of letting it crisp and brown in the butter. Thorough drying lets the coating adhere and fry properly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter. 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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