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Breaded Salt Mackerel

Breaded salt mackerel is a fried fish dish served with battered toast and tart apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Breaded Salt Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the salt mackerel overnight in lukewarm water or milk and water.

  2. Drain, wipe dry, and brush both sides with melted butter.

Coat and cook

  1. Roll the mackerel in dried bread crumbs mixed with salt and pepper.

  2. Dip the mackerel in the beaten egg, then roll it again in the bread crumbs.

  3. Pan-broil in a little hot dripping or lard until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve on strips of battered toast with quartered tart apples.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt mackerel
Provides the main fish and savoury flavour; soaking reduces its salt before cooking.
Dried bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that protects the fish during frying.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs stick to the fish.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the coating brown.
Tart apples
Add acidity that balances the rich, salty fish.

The step that matters

Pan-broil until cooked through. Frying over moderate heat in hot fat browns the breaded coating while the fish cooks through. Heat that is too high can scorch the crumbs before the fish is done, and heat that is too low leaves the coating greasy and pale.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, bread, pepper, egg):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, bread, pepper, egg. 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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