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Pickled Mackerel

A mackerel preserved by layering with a salt, sugar, pepper, and coriander mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: White pepper and coriander work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 146 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Pickled Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Split the fish, remove the heads and part of the belly skin.

  2. Soak the fish in brine for 3 to 4 hours.

Cure and pack

  1. Mix the salt, saltpetre, sugar, white pepper, and coriander seed together.

  2. Sprinkle some of the mixture on the bottom of a jar.

  3. Layer the mackerel in the jar with the back downwards.

  4. Add another layer of the mixture 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. White pepper + coriandertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + coriandertop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,749 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + white peppertop 42% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together812 recipes

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the fish and seasons it, slowing spoilage during curing.
Saltpetre
Helps keep the fish pink and firm during the cure.
Sugar
Balances the saltiness and adds a mild sweetness to the cured fish.

The step that matters

Layering the mackerel in the cure. Each fish needs full contact with the salt mixture, or some areas will cure unevenly and spoil. Packing the layers evenly, with salt on the bottom and top, helps the cure penetrate the flesh consistently.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, coriander):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, coriander. 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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