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Broiled Salt Mackerel

A broiled mackerel seasoned with pepper, butter, salt, and parsley, served with lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Rinse the mackerel and place it in a dish.

  2. Scald the fish with milk or water.

  3. Dust the fish with pepper and dot with butter.

Make the maitre d'hotel butter

  1. For maitre d'hotel butter, cream butter and mix in salt, pepper, chopped parsley, and lemon juice to taste.

Serve

  1. Spread the maitre d'hotel butter on the fish before serving.

  2. Serve with lemon slices.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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 other ingredients.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the seasoning cling to the fish.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, salty fish.
Chopped parsley
Contributes fresh, herbal aroma to the butter.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Cardamomfits less well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, pepper, butter. 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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