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Mackerel Pie

A baked mackerel pie with forcemeat filling, bread crumbs, parsley, onion, mace, pepper, salt, butter, eggs, and mashed potatoes or puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mackerel Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Clean the mackerel and remove the meats and roes.

  2. In a bowl, mix the meats, roes, bread crumbs, parsley, onion, mace, pepper, salt, butter, and eggs to form a forcemeat.

Stuff and dress the fish

  1. Stuff the mackerel with the forcemeat and sew them up neatly.

  2. Place the stuffed mackerel in an oval flat dish, surrounded by mashed potatoes or puff pastry.

  3. Cover the fish with bread crumbs and dot with butter.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes or until cooked through.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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

Mackerel
Forms the main body of the pie and provides the rich, flaky filling.
Eggs
Bind the forcemeat so it holds together when stuffed and baked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body to the forcemeat, and form a crisp topping.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the top crust brown.

The step that matters

Stuff the mackerel with the forcemeat and sew them up neatly. If the fish is overfilled or the stitching is loose, the forcemeat can swell and burst out during baking. Filling gently and closing the opening firmly keeps the stuffing inside and the fish evenly cooked.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, parsley, mace, pepper, butter, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, parsley, mace, pepper, butter, 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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