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Broiled Spanish Mackerel

Broiled Spanish mackerel seasoned with coarse sea salt, butter, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broiled Spanish Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean, wash, and dry the mackerel.

  2. Split the fish so the backbone is in the middle when laid flat.

  3. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

Cook

  1. Place the fish, inside down, on a buttered grill over a clear fire.

  2. Cook until nicely colored.

  3. Turn the fish.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the fish to a hot dish.

  2. Add plenty of butter and pepper.

  3. Cover with a hot lid.

  4. Serve.

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 + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  2. Spanish mackerel + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together34 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

  3. Spanish mackerel + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together31 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Spanish mackerel
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into flaky, tender flesh over the fire.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the skin brown on the buttered grill.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the flesh and draws out a little surface moisture to aid browning.

The step that matters

Cook until nicely colored. Fish is delicate and can stick or dry out if turned too early or cooked too long. Wait until the flesh releases easily and the surface has browned before turning, so it holds together and stays moist.

“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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