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Baked Mackerel

Baked mackerel served with a sauce of cider, onion, nutmeg, parsley, pepper, salt, stock, egg yolk, flour, butter, and tarragon vinegar, topped with breadcrumbs.

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

Baked Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Place the mackerel in an enamelled stewpan with cider, onion, nutmeg, parsley, pepper, and salt.

  2. Cover and cook gently for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Add white stock, egg yolk, flour, and butter.

  2. Heat until hot.

  3. Strain the sauce.

Bake and serve

  1. Carefully remove the fish and place it in a baking dish.

  2. Pour the sauce over the fish.

  3. Sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  4. Bake until lightly browned.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 and becomes flaky and tender when gently cooked.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Flour
Helps thicken the sauce so it clings to the fish instead of running off.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, lightly browned topping during baking.
White stock
Provides the liquid base of the sauce and carries its savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Heating the sauce with egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens when heated, but if the sauce gets too hot it can curdle and turn grainy. Heat gently and stir, then strain to smooth out any lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, nutmeg, parsley, pepper, egg, flour, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, nutmeg, parsley, pepper, egg, flour, butter. 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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