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Mackerel, Fillets of

Mackerel fillets simmered in a stock and béchamel sauce with butter, parsley, salt, cayenne, and optional lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Mackerel, Fillets of

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine stock and béchamel sauce.

  2. Add butter, chopped parsley, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Cut mackerel into fillets and add to the sauce.

Cook and serve

  1. Simmer over low heat for 20 minutes until cooked.

  2. Remove fillets and place on a hot dish.

  3. Thicken the sauce with flour, boil, and pour over the fillets.

  4. Add lemon juice if desired.

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. Parsley + peppertop 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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, cooking gently in the simmering sauce until opaque and tender.
Béchamel sauce
Provides a creamy, thick base that coats the fish and carries the flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce, giving it body so it clings to the fillets.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour, then boil. Flour must be fully mixed in and brought to a boil so its starch swells and thickens the sauce; without boiling, the sauce stays thin and tastes floury.

“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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