Skip to main content
Main

Baked Mackerel

Baked Mackerel is a fish dish baked with cider, onion, spices, stock, egg yolk, flour, butter, and topped with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Baked Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Poach the fish

  1. Place the mackerel in an enamelled stewpan with cider, minced onion, nutmeg, parsley, pepper, and salt.

  2. Cover and cook gently for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Add white stock, egg yolk, flour, and butter.

  2. Heat until hot.

Bake and serve

  1. Carefully remove the fish and place it in a baking dish.

  2. Strain the sauce and pour it over the fish.

  3. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and bake at 400°F (200°C) until lightly browned.

  4. Serve in the baking dish.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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 and becomes flaky and tender when gently cooked.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce as it heats and gives it a rich, smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the stock and butter mixture so the sauce clings to the fish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and helps it taste smooth.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savory depth.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, lightly browned topping in the oven.

The step that matters

Heating the sauce after adding the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens when heated, but if the sauce gets too hot or boils, the yolk can scramble and turn grainy. Heat gently and stir until just hot.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, nutmeg, parsley, pepper, veal, egg, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, nutmeg, parsley, pepper, veal, egg, flour. 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.

More baked mackerel recipes

or Herring 4 See all 75 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes