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Pickled Mackerel, Called Caveach

Pickled mackerel seasoned with pepper, nutmeg, mace, cloves, and salt, fried then preserved in vinegar and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Mackerel, Called Caveach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and divide the mackerel; cut each side into three or five pieces.

  2. Mix the pepper, nutmegs, mace, cloves, and salt into a fine powder.

  3. Make holes in each piece of fish and thrust the seasoning into them; rub each piece with the seasoning.

Fry and pickle

  1. Fry the seasoned fish in oil until brown; let them cool.

  2. Place the fish in a stone jar and cover with vinegar; pour oil on top if preserving for a long time.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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, holding the seasoning and absorbing the vinegar.
Black pepper
Adds pungent heat and aroma that flavours the fish throughout.
Nutmeg
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the fish.
Cloves
Adds strong aromatic spice that complements the fish.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the fish and gives it a sharp, tangy flavour.

The step that matters

Fry the seasoned fish until brown. Browning the fish in hot oil sets its surface and develops flavour through the Maillard reaction. Frying too little leaves the fish under-cooked and less stable, while frying too long dries it out.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, clove, 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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