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A Nice Way to Cook Salt Mackerel

A method for cooking salt mackerel with flour, cream, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A Nice Way to Cook Salt Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Fill a kettle with cold water.

  2. Add the salt mackerel to the kettle.

  3. Cook for one hour, then drain the fish.

Finish and serve

  1. Place the fish in a pan.

  2. Dredge the fish with flour.

  3. Pour the cream over the fish.

  4. Add the butter.

  5. Cook for a few minutes, then serve.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Salt mackerel
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the dish.
Flour
Coats the fish and thickens the cream as it cooks.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, body-giving sauce around the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky finish to the sauce.

“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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