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Broiled Salt Mackerel

A whole salt mackerel is soaked, broiled, and served with butter, pepper, lemon juice, vinegar, or chopped pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broiled Salt Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the salt mackerel overnight in water, skin side up.

  2. In the morning, dry the mackerel carefully without breaking it.

  3. Cut off the head and tip of the tail.

Broil and serve

  1. Place the mackerel on a buttered fish grill and broil until light brown.

  2. Transfer to a hot dish and dress with butter, pepper, lemon juice, vinegar, or chopped pickle.

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

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

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. 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

Salt mackerel
Is the main fish, whose salt-cured flesh is softened by soaking before cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the surface brown under the broiler.

The step that matters

Dry the mackerel carefully without breaking it. Soaking leaves the surface wet, and excess moisture steams the fish instead of letting it brown. Handling gently keeps the delicate flesh from tearing.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Mangofits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, vinegar. 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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