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Broiled Mackerel

A mackerel fillet seasoned, broiled, and stuffed with a parsley‑butter mixture.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove gills and insides from the mackerel and wipe it clean and dry.

  2. Open the back and season with pepper, salt, and oil.

Broil

  1. Broil over a clear fire, turning it on both sides and the back.

  2. Cook for about 10 minutes until the flesh detaches from the bone.

Stuff and serve

  1. Chop parsley and mix with butter, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the back of the mackerel and serve before the butter melts.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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 provides rich, oily flesh that cooks to tender flakes.
Butter
Melts into the fish under heat, adding moisture and richness to the flesh.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, oily flavour of the mackerel.
Oil
Coats the fish to help seasoning adhere and encourages browning under the broiler.

The step that matters

Cook for about 10 minutes until the flesh detaches from the bone. Mackerel dries out quickly under direct heat. Checking that the flesh pulls away from the bone shows it is cooked through while still moist, so it does not become tough.

“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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