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To Prepare Salt Mackerel to Cook

Salt mackerel is prepared by removing the backbone, freshening overnight, broiling, and serving with sweet cream or a milk gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Prepare Salt Mackerel to Cook

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the backbone by cutting off the ribs close to it and pulling it out.

  2. Freshen the mackerel overnight by laying it skin side up in a pan full of water.

  3. Place a few sticks under the fish to help it float in the water.

Cook and serve

  1. After freshening, broil the mackerel on a wire gridiron.

  2. When done, pour sweet cream over it, or make a gravy with milk thickened with flour and add butter.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Flour and butter 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

Salt mackerel
The main fish, whose flesh forms the body of the dish once cooked.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and fat, and a smooth, moist coating over the cooked fish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, giving it body and a mild, creamy flavour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a gravy as its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the gravy, smoothing its flavour.

The step that matters

Freshening the mackerel overnight. Soaking the salted fish in water draws out surplus salt. Too little soaking leaves the fish harshly salty, while the right soak keeps the flesh seasoned but not overpowering.

“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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