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Mackerel Salad

A salad of baked mackerel served with a vinegar and olive oil dressing, garnished with lemon and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Mackerel Salad

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the mackerel.

  2. Wrap them in clean, buttered brown paper.

  3. Place the wrapped mackerel in a pan.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the skin adheres to the paper.

  5. Open the fish.

  6. Place it on a platter.

  7. Remove the bone.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the cider vinegar, cold water, and olive oil.

  2. Season the dressing with small pieces of onion, celery salt, and capers.

  3. Garnish the salad with sliced lemons and parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 salad and provides the flesh that is flaked and served.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the richness of the fish.
Olive oil
Adds fat to the dressing, giving it body and carrying flavour.
Capers
Add a salty, sharp accent that cuts through the oily fish.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the skin adheres to the paper. Baking in buttered paper cooks the fish gently in its own moisture. Stopping when the skin releases from the paper, rather than drying it out, keeps the flesh moist and easy to separate from the bone.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, vinegar, olive, celery, capers, lemon, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, olive, celery, capers, lemon, parsley. 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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