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Broiled Salt Mackerel with Butter Sauce

A salt mackerel broiled with butter sauce, served with potatoes, lemon slices, and parsley or watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 Salt Mackerel with Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the salt mackerel in plenty of cold water overnight, skin side up.

  2. Trim off the tail, fins, and point of the head in the morning.

  3. Dry the mackerel and place it on a well-buttered double-wire gridiron.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the fish over a hot fire until browned.

  2. While the fish is cooking, boil the potatoes as desired.

  3. Prepare a butter sauce.

  4. Serve the fish with lemon slices and garnish with parsley or watercress, alongside the potatoes and sauce in hot dishes.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

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

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; soaking draws out salt so the flesh tastes mild.
Butter
Greases the gridiron and enriches the sauce, adding richness and helping browning.
Potatoes
Serve as a starchy side that soaks up the butter sauce and fish juices.

The step that matters

Broil the fish over a hot fire until browned. Broiling at high heat browns the surface quickly while the interior cooks through. Watching closely prevents drying out or scorching the thin, fatty fish.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon, parsley. 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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