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Boiled Salt Mackerel with Butter

A boiled salt mackerel served with butter, optional white sauce, and boiled potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Salt Mackerel with Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Freshen the fish

  1. Soak the salt mackerel overnight in cold water, skin side up, or heat it in fresh water, changing the water frequently.

  2. Place the fish skin side up in a large pan and cover it with cold water.

  3. Heat the pan over gentle heat until the water is scalding hot, then pour off the water and replace it with cold water.

  4. Continue this process until the fish is freshened and generally cooked.

Finish and serve

  1. While the fish is freshening, prepare a sauce as desired.

  2. Once the fish is ready, drain it, pour the sauce over it, and serve with butter and boiled potatoes.

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. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + potatotop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Salt mackerel
Salt-cured fish that is freshened in water so it loses excess salt and becomes tender when cooked.
Boiled potatoes
Starchy side that soaks up the fish's savoury juices and sauce, adding substance to the plate.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the salty fish when served on the side.

The step that matters

Heating the pan until the water is scalding hot. Gentle heating and repeated water changes draw salt out of the fish gradually. Heating too hard or too long can toughen the flesh and leave it dry and stringy.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce. 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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