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To Boil Mackerel

A boiled mackerel served with fennel garnish and a vinegar-based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Fennel and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,216 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Boil Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the mackerel well and soak them in a mixture of vinegar and water for a short time.

  2. Prepare fennel and butter, and green gooseberry sauce.

Cook

  1. Boil water with coarse sea salt, then add the mackerel and cook for 15 minutes.

  2. To souse the mackerel, mix ½ pint of vinegar with 1 quart of the boiling liquid, add black pepper, mace, and bay leaves.

  3. Once cooled, cover the mackerel completely with the souse mixture, removing the bay leaves.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with fennel.

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. Fennel + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,216 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Vinegar + fenneltop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and sauce 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
The main fish, cooked gently in salted water to firm and flake.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the souse.
Black pepper
Adds warm, pungent aroma to the souse.
Bay leaves
Infuse the souse with a herbal aroma.
Green gooseberries
Provide tartness in the sauce, balancing the richness of the butter.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, fennel, butter, sauce, pepper. 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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