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Salt Mackerel Stewed with Cream

A stew of salted mackerel simmered in milk or cream, thickened with a butter‑flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Salt Mackerel Stewed with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the mackerel in warm water overnight.

  2. Cook the mackerel in a shallow pan with enough water to cover it for 15 minutes, then drain it.

Make the gravy

  1. Cover the mackerel with milk or cream.

  2. Mix flour with a little butter until smooth.

  3. Add the mixture to the pan to thicken the gravy.

  4. Add pepper to the gravy.

Serve

  1. Place the mackerel on a platter.

  2. Pour the gravy over the fish.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 body of the dish, its flesh flaking into the stew.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and, mixed with the flour, helps it blend smoothly.

The step that matters

Mixing flour with butter until smooth. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because the outer layer of each granule hydrates first and traps dry flour inside. Blending it into butter first coats the granules so they disperse evenly and thicken the gravy without lumps.

“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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