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Pickled Mackerel Called Caveach

A pickled mackerel preserved in vinegar and oil, seasoned with pepper, nutmeg, mace, cloves, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 pieces or leave undivided and cut each fish into five or six pieces.

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

Season and fry

  1. Make holes in each piece of fish and thrust the seasoning into them, rubbing each piece with some of the mixture.

  2. Fry the seasoned fish in oil until brown, then let them cool.

Pickle and store

  1. Place the cooled fish into a stone jar and cover with vinegar. If preserving for a long time, pour oil on top.

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, and its oily flesh holds the seasoning and vinegar.
Vinegar
Acidifies the fish and helps preserve it when it covers the pieces in the jar.
Black pepper
Adds sharp pungency that flavours the fish through the holes cut into it.
Nutmeg
Contributes warm, aromatic flavour to the seasoning rubbed into the fish.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the fish and draws moisture out, helping it keep and firm up.

The step that matters

Frying until brown. Frying until brown sears the surface and drives off moisture, which helps the fish keep its texture and gives a deeper flavour before it is pickled. Let the pieces cool fully before placing them in vinegar so the pickling liquid is not diluted or heated.

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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