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Fillets of Mackerel Stewed in Wine

A dish of mackerel fillets stewed in wine with butter, flour, spices, and sauces.

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, then add the flour and stir for a minute.

  2. Add the salt, cayenne, mace, and the lemon rind to the pan.

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

  4. Pour in the port wine, Harvey's sauce, soy sauce, and lemon juice, and stew until the fish is very tender.

Serve

  1. Carefully lift the fish out and serve hot with the sauce poured over it.

  2. Stir the mustard into the sauce before serving.

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
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender as it stews.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the melted butter.
Port wine
Provides liquid for stewing and adds sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Harvey's sauce
Adds savoury, tangy depth to the stewing liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich wine and butter sauce.

The step that matters

Stewing until the fish is very tender. Mackerel is delicate and flakes easily, so it can overcook and turn dry or tough. Gentle, steady heat in the wine sauce keeps the flesh moist while it softens.

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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