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Fillets of Mackerel Stewed in Wine

Fillets of mackerel stewed in wine with butter, flour, lemon, spices, and sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fillets of Mackerel Stewed in Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the flesh from the bones of the mackerel and cut it into six equal pieces if large, or leave whole if small.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and mix in the flour, cooking for one minute.

  2. Add the salt, cayenne, pounded mace, and the thinly pared rind of the lemon.

  3. Gently place the fillets in the pan and cook for 4 to 5 minutes, turning once.

  4. Pour in the port wine, Harvey's sauce, soy sauce, and lemon juice, and simmer until the thinner parts of the fish begin to break.

Serve

  1. Carefully lift the fillets out, place them on a dish, and serve hot with the sauce poured over.

  2. Stir the mustard into the sauce before serving.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 firms as it cooks in the liquid.
Butter
Carries the spices and gives the sauce richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the butter and wine mixture into a sauce as it cooks.
Port wine
Provides the liquid base of the sauce and adds sweetness and depth of flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, wine-based sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the sauce until the fish begins to break. Thin parts of the fish cook quickly and can flake apart or overcook while thicker parts are still done. Watching for the first flaking, rather than a fixed time, keeps the fillets intact while the sauce reduces.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, lemon, pepper, port wine, sauce, mustard):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, lemon, pepper, port wine, sauce, mustard. 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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