Skip to main content
Main

Broiled Mackerel

A grilled mackerel seasoned with butter, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and pepper 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 ↓

Broiled Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and wipe the fish well.

  2. Grease a grill or gridiron.

Broil and serve

  1. Place the fish on the grill and broil over hot coals until both sides are well browned.

  2. Remove the fish to a hot platter.

  3. Butter the fish slightly, then season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Serve quickly.

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. Butter + peppertop 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, cooking to a firm, flaky texture over direct heat.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the cooked fish's surface after broiling.

The step that matters

Broiling until both sides are well browned. Browning comes from direct, high heat on the surface, which adds flavor. Cooking too long or too little can leave the fish dry or underdone, so both sides need to be watched closely.

“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 broiled mackerel recipes

with Herbs 3 See all 102 →

You might also like

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