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Broiled Spanish Mackerel

Broiled Spanish Mackerel served with olive oil, butter, lemon, parsley, and Sauce à la Maitre d'Hotel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 Spanish Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the grill.

  2. Clean the mackerel and split it down the middle of the back if large.

  3. Brush the fish with olive oil and butter.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the fish until cooked through.

  2. Serve whole on a dish garnished with parsley and lemon slices.

  3. Drizzle with Sauce à la Maitre d'Hotel.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  3. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

  4. Spanish mackerel + saucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Spanish mackerel
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to flaky, opaque flesh under the grill.
Olive oil
Coats the fish to prevent drying and help it take on color under the heat.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the surface brown as it cooks.

The step that matters

Broil the fish until cooked through. Fish cooks quickly under intense direct heat, so it can dry out or overcook before the thickest part is done. Checking the flesh near the backbone helps prevent this.

“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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