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Mackerel, Fillets of

Mackerel fillets simmered in béchamel sauce with butter and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Mackerel, Fillets of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash, dry, and fillet the mackerel.

  2. Melt the butter in a sauté pan and fry the fillets without browning them.

  3. Remove the fish and keep it warm.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Add the Bechamel sauce to the pan and heat nearly to boiling.

  2. Return the fish to the pan, cover closely, and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Carefully transfer the fish to a warm dish, add lemon juice to the sauce, season if necessary, and strain the sauce over the fish.

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. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Sauce + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 provides its rich, oily flavour.
Bechamel sauce
Provides a creamy, smooth coating that moistens the fish as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat for gentle frying and a rich, savoury flavour to the fillets.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the oily fish.

The step that matters

Simmer the fish gently in covered pan. Fish protein sets and toughens quickly at high heat, so a gentle simmer under a lid keeps the fillets moist and tender. Boiling the sauce hard can also cause it to separate or form a skin.

“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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