Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Mackerel

A boiled mackerel served with parsley sauce, mustard, and minced parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the mackerel well.

  2. Soak them in vinegar and water for a short time.

Boil

  1. Place the mackerel in a fish kettle with cold water and a handful of coarse sea salt.

  2. Boil slowly for about 20 minutes, or until the eye starts to bulge and the tail splits.

  3. Remove the mackerel immediately once cooked to prevent breaking.

Serve

  1. Serve with parsley sauce and garnish with minced parsley.

  2. Serve mustard on the side.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mackerel
Provides the main flesh, which firms and flakes as it cooks in the gentle simmer.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the oily fish.

The step that matters

Remove the mackerel immediately once cooked. Fish protein keeps firming and then breaks apart if it stays in hot liquid after it is cooked, so lifting it out promptly keeps the fish whole.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sauce, mustard. 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.

More boiled mackerel recipes

Fillets 13 See all 72 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes