Skip to main content
Main

Dressed Fish in General

Mackerel fillets cooked in butter, lemon, and parsley, served with Maitre d' Hotel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Dressed Fish in General

Ingredients

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

  1. Fillet the mackerel by running a knife along the backbone from head to tail.

  2. Cut each fillet into two pieces and trim the ends.

  3. Place the fillets side by side in a buttered sauté pan.

Cook

  1. Season with pepper, salt, and chopped parsley.

  2. Squeeze lemon juice over the fillets and drizzle with oiled butter.

  3. Cover with buttered paper and cook in a 350°F (175°C) oven or on the stove for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Drain the fillets on a napkin and arrange them in a wreath shape on a serving dish.

  2. Serve with Maitre d' Hotel sauce and place parboiled soft roes in the center if desired.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + roetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 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, cooking into tender, flaky flesh.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the fish stay tender as it cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich fish and butter.

The step that matters

Cover with buttered paper and cook for 20 minutes. Covering traps steam so the thin fillets cook gently and stay moist. Overcooking dries the delicate flesh, so the fillets should be checked for opacity and flaking.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes