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Fillets of Mackerel Stewed in Wine

Mackerel fillets stewed gently in a sauce of port wine, Harvey's sauce, soy sauce, lemon juice and spices.

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 pieces if large, or leave whole if small.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and mix in the flour, cooking for one minute.

  2. Add the salt, cayenne, mace, and the thinly pared rind of the lemon.

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

Cook and serve

  1. Gently place the fillets in the pan and cook for 4 to 5 minutes, turning once.

  2. Carefully lift the fillets out and serve them 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 as it stews.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the liquid, which reduces during gentle stewing.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the spices and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid, giving the sauce body.
Lemon rind and juice
Adds acidity and bright aroma that cut through the richness of the fish.

The step that matters

Stewing the fish gently. Fish proteins toughen and dry out when boiled hard. A gentle simmer lets the thinner parts break naturally while the thicker pieces stay moist and intact.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, lemon, pepper, mace, port wine, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

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