Skip to main content
Main

To Stew Mackerel

A stew of mackerel cooked with butter, water, onions, parsley, mace, pepper, salt, anchovy essence, ale, and bread crust, finished with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Stew Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the heads, fins, and tails from the mackerel and open the fish, removing the hard roes.

  2. Dry the fish with a cloth and dredge lightly with flour.

Stew

  1. In a stew pan, place 3 to 4 fish with ½ cup of butter for each fish.

  2. In a small bowl, combine water, onions, parsley, mace, pepper, salt, anchovy essence, and ale or porter.

  3. Pour the mixture over the fish and let them stew gently for 20 minutes.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix some of the gravy with the beaten egg yolks gradually.

  2. Pour the egg mixture over the fish and shake the stew pan over the heat to thicken without curdling the eggs.

  3. Add the soft roes if desired.

  4. Place the fish in a serving dish, sprinkle with additional grated bread crust, and 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 stew and gives it its rich fish flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the gentle stew.
Egg yolks
Thicken the gravy into a smooth, creamy sauce when heated gently.
Ale or porter
Adds malty aroma and depth to the gravy.
Bread crust
Lightly thickens the gravy and adds a toasted crumb topping.

The step that matters

Shake the stew pan while adding the egg mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated but curdle if they get too hot or sit still. Keeping the pan moving over gentle heat lets the gravy thicken smoothly without scrambling the eggs.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, walnut, fish, onion, parsley, pepper, anchovy):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, walnut, fish, onion, parsley, pepper, anchovy. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes