Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Salt Mackerel in Cream
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
Freshen the mackerel as for broiling.
Place the mackerel in a baking pan.
Pour in the new milk.
Bake and serve
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 25 minutes.
Five minutes before serving, add the butter.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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, whose salty, firm flesh is softened and flavoured by the milk.
- New milk
- Bakes into a creamy sauce that mellows the saltiness of the cured fish.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a glossy finish to the sauce when stirred in near the end.
The step that matters
Freshen the mackerel. Salt-cured fish holds a lot of salt. Soaking it draws out excess salt, so the milk sauce tastes balanced rather than overly salty and the flesh cooks more tender.
“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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