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Boiled Salt Mackerel

A boiled salt mackerel served with a butter‑cream sauce, garnished with lemon and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Boiled Salt Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash and clean the mackerel to remove brine and salt.

  2. Soak the mackerel meat side down in cold water overnight.

  3. Rinse the fish in one or two changes of water.

  4. Wrap the mackerel in a cloth and place it in a kettle with enough cold water to cover it.

  5. Cook the wrapped mackerel for about 30 minutes.

  6. Carefully remove the fish from the cloth and take out the backbones.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour melted butter and cream over the fish, then sprinkle lightly with pepper.

  2. Heat 1 cup of milk until scalding.

  3. Stir in 1 teaspoon of cornstarch mixed with a little water into the milk.

  4. When the sauce thickens, add 2 tablespoons of butter, pepper, salt, and chopped parsley to taste.

  5. Beat the egg lightly.

  6. Gradually pour the sauce over the beaten egg, return the mixture to the heat, and stir for one minute.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish and serve garnished with lemon slices or sprigs of parsley or watercress.

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. Parsley + lemontop 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Butter + milktop 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

Salt mackerel
Is the main fish, softened by soaking and gently cooked in water.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, which thickens and becomes creamy when heated.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Egg
Enriches the sauce and adds body when gently heated with it.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish to the sauce and fish.

The step that matters

Gradually pour the sauce over the beaten egg, return the mixture to the heat, and stir for one minute.. Adding hot sauce to egg slowly, while stirring, warms the egg gently so it thickens smoothly instead of scrambling. Reheating must stay gentle so the sauce stays silky.

“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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