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Boiled Salt Mackerel

A boiled salt mackerel served with a butter‑cornstarch sauce and garnished with lemon and parsley.

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 mackerel

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

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

  3. In the morning, rinse the mackerel in 1 or 2 waters.

Cook the fish

  1. Wrap the mackerel in a cloth and place it in a kettle with cold water.

  2. Cook for about 30 minutes.

  3. Carefully remove the mackerel from the cloth and take out the back bones.

  4. Pour melted butter and cream over the fish, and sprinkle with pepper.

Make the cream sauce

  1. For the cream sauce, heat the milk until scalding.

  2. Stir in the cornstarch mixed with a little water until thickened.

  3. Add butter, pepper, salt, and chopped parsley to taste.

  4. Beat the egg lightly and gradually pour the sauce over it.

  5. Return the mixture to the heat and stir for 1 minute.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish and serve with lemon slices or parsley/watercress as garnish.

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
Provides the main fish flesh, which soaking and rinsing make mild enough to eat.
Milk
Forms the base of the cream sauce, giving it its body and richness.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when heated.
Egg
Enriches the sauce and adds body and a silkier texture when stirred in.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour to the fish and the sauce.

The step that matters

Return the mixture to the heat and stir for 1 minute. Egg thickens by gentle heat, so the sauce must be kept warm and stirred to avoid scrambling. Once the egg is added, overheating can curdle it and leave the sauce grainy.

“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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