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To Stew Mackerel

A stew of mackerel cooked with butter, water, onions, parsley, mace, anchovy essence, ale, and finished with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

To Stew Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the heads, fins, and tails from the mackerel and open the fish to remove the hard roes.

  2. Dry the fish with a cloth and dredge lightly with flour.

  3. In a stew pan, place the 4 mackerel with ¼ cup of butter.

Stew

  1. In a small bowl, combine 1 cup of water, 1 tablespoon of finely chopped onions, 1 tablespoon of chopped parsley, 2 blades of mace, ¼ teaspoon of pepper, ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt, 1 tablespoon of anchovy essence, and ⅓ cup of ale or porter.

  2. Pour this mixture over the fish and let them stew gently for 20 minutes.

Thicken and serve

  1. Beat the yolks of 3 eggs in a bowl.

  2. When the fish is done, gradually mix some gravy with the eggs.

  3. Pour the egg mixture over the fish and gently shake the stew pan over the heat to thicken without curdling the eggs.

  4. Add the soft roes if desired.

  5. Place the fish in a serving dish, sprinkle with more grated bread crust, and serve.

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. Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Mackerel
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently in the seasoned liquid.
Egg yolks
Thicken the gravy into a smooth sauce as they gently set with heat.
Flour
Light dusting on the fish helps the surface brown and lightly coats the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the pan, carrying flavour through the stew.
Ale or porter
Adds malty depth and body to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but curdle if the mixture gets too hot or is added undiluted. Mixing in some hot gravy first and shaking the pan over gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, walnut, onion, parsley, pepper, anchovy):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, walnut, onion, parsley, pepper, anchovy. 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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