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Pickled Mackerel Called Caveach

Pickled mackerel seasoned with pepper, nutmeg, mace, cloves, and salt, fried, then preserved in vinegar and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Mackerel Called Caveach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and divide the mackerel.

  2. Cut each side into three or leave undivided and cut each fish into five or six pieces.

Season and fry

  1. Mix the pepper, nutmegs, mace, cloves, and salt into a fine powder.

  2. Make holes in each piece of fish and thrust the seasoning into them. Rub each piece with some of the mixture.

  3. Fry the fish in oil until brown.

  4. Let them cool.

Pickle and preserve

  1. Place the cooled fish in a stone jar and cover with vinegar.

  2. Pour oil on top for long-term preservation.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 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 body of the dish; its oily flesh holds up to frying and pickling.
Black pepper
Adds pungent heat and aroma to the spice coating on the fish.
Nutmeg
Contributes warm, aromatic flavour to the spice mixture.
Vinegar
Acidifies the fish, adding sharpness and helping preserve it.
Oil
Frying oil browns the fish; the top layer of oil seals it for long-term keeping.

The step that matters

Fry the fish in oil until brown. Frying until well browned cooks the fish through and dries its surface, which helps it keep once pickled. Underdone fish spoils more readily under vinegar and oil.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, nutmeg, clove, vinegar):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, clove, vinegar. 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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