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To Broil Mackerel

A grilled mackerel seasoned with cayenne pepper, sea salt, and clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and butter 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 ↓

To Broil Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the mackerel thoroughly and make a gash from head to tail on one side to clear the backbone.

  2. Rub the gash with cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt, then moisten with clarified butter.

  3. Preheat the grill and grease the bars with suet to prevent sticking.

Broil

  1. Broil the mackerel over a clear fire, starting with the thinner sides.

  2. Once the sides are done, hold the fish in front of the fire for five minutes with the back facing the heat.

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. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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 carries the flavour of the seasoning and butter.
Clarified butter
Adds moisture and richness, helping the fish stay juicy over direct heat.

The step that matters

Broiling the thinner sides first. Thinner parts cook faster than the thick back, so starting with them prevents dryness at the edges while the thick flesh finishes cooking.

“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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