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Fillets of Mackerel Stewed in Wine

A fish stew of mackerel fillets cooked with butter, flour, spices, and wine, finished with mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Fillets of Mackerel Stewed in Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the flesh from the bones of the mackerel and cut it into six equal parts if large, or leave whole if small.

Stew the fish

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the flour and cook for one minute.

  3. Add the cayenne, salt, lemon rind, and the fillets of fish.

  4. Cook gently for 4 to 5 minutes, turning once.

  5. Pour in the port wine, Harvey's sauce, soy sauce, and lemon juice, and stew until the thinner parts of the fish begin to break.

  6. Carefully lift the fillets out and place them on a dish.

Serve

  1. Stir the mustard into the sauce before serving.

  2. Serve hot with the sauce.

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. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 fillets
Provides the main protein, which firms as it cooks and flakes when done.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the dish and gives the sauce richness.
Flour
Thickens the sauce slightly once it is cooked with the butter.
Port wine
Forms the liquid of the stew and adds sweetness and depth of flavour.
Lemon rind
Adds bright aromatic oils that lift the richness of the fish and butter.

The step that matters

Stewing until the thinner parts begin to break. Thin pieces of fish cook through quickly and turn dry or fall apart if left too long, while thick pieces stay underdone. Watching the thinner parts keeps the fillets tender and intact.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, lemon, pepper, port wine, sauce, mustard):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, lemon, pepper, port wine, sauce, mustard. 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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