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Boiled Salt Mackerel

A boiled salt mackerel served with a cream sauce and garnished with lemon and herbs.

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

Boiled Salt Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the mackerel to remove brine and salt, then soak it meat side down in cold water overnight.

  2. In the morning, rinse the fish in one or two changes of water.

  3. Wrap the mackerel in a cloth and place it in a kettle with enough cold water to cover it.

  4. Cook for about 30 minutes.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Carefully remove the fish from the cloth, take out the backbones, and pour melted butter and cream over it, sprinkling with pepper.

  2. For the cream sauce, heat the milk until scalding.

  3. Stir in the cornstarch mixed with a little water until thickened.

  4. Add butter, pepper, salt, and chopped parsley to taste.

  5. Beat the egg lightly, then gradually pour the sauce over it, stirring for one minute over low heat.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish and serve with lemon slices or sprigs of parsley or watercress as garnish.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Salt mackerel
Is the main fish, cured so that soaking and rinsing remove excess salt before cooking.
Milk
Forms the base of the cream sauce, which is thickened to coat the fish.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Egg
Enriches the sauce and adds body and richness when stirred in gently over low heat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce and to the finished fish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce over the fish.

The step that matters

Adding the sauce to the beaten egg. Pouring hot sauce into the egg too quickly can scramble it. Adding the sauce gradually while stirring over low heat tempers the egg so it thickens smoothly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cream, pepper, milk, egg, lemon):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, pepper, milk, egg, lemon. 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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