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Fillets of Mackarel a LA Maitre d'Hotel

Fillets of mackerel marinated with herbs, then baked or sautéed and served with Steward’s sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 9,057 recipes mention both. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: mackerel

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fillets

  1. Fillet the mackerel and cut each fillet in two, shaping them neatly.

  2. Marinate the fillets in oil, parsley, bay leaf, thyme, fennel, onion, pepper, and salt for half a day.

  3. Drain the fillets and place them in a sauté pan with clarified butter.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover with buttered paper and bake at 350 °F (175 °C) or sauté over high heat until done.

  2. Wash the soft roes, drain, and bake them covered with butter, seasoned with salt and pepper.

  3. Drain the fillets and serve them on a dish, masking with Steward’s sauce.

  4. Once done, place the soft roes on top of the fillets for garnish.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + fenneltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together337 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + fenneltop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Mackerel (in the method)
Forms the main body of the dish as the fish fillets that are cooked and served.
Oil
Carries the herbs and aromatics into the fish during the marinade and keeps the flesh moist.
Clarified butter
Cooks the fillets in fat and adds richness and golden browning in the pan.
Soft roes
Add a rich, creamy texture and savoury flavour as a garnish on the fillets.

The step that matters

Cooking the fillets until done. Mackerel flesh is delicate and dries out or toughens quickly with high heat or overcooking, so it should be watched closely and removed as soon as it flakes.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, thyme, fennel, pepper, butter, sauce, roe):

  1. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, thyme, fennel, pepper, butter, sauce, roe. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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