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Dressed Fish in General

Mackerel fillets baked or cooked in butter with lemon juice, parsley, and served with Maitre d’Hotel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Dressed Fish in General

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Fillet the mackerel by drawing a knife down the backbone to the tail.

  2. Cut each fillet into two pieces.

  3. Trim the ends.

  4. Place the fillets side by side in a buttered sauté pan.

Cook

  1. Season with pepper, salt, and chopped parsley.

  2. Squeeze lemon juice over the fillets.

  3. Drizzle with oiled butter.

  4. Cover with buttered paper and cook in a 350°F (175°C) oven or on the stove for 20 minutes.

  5. Drain the fillets on a napkin.

Serve

  1. Arrange them in a wreath shape on a serving dish.

  2. Place any parboiled soft roes in the center.

  3. Serve with Maitre d’Hotel 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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, cooking to tender, flaky flesh.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the fish stay tender while it cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich fish.

The step that matters

Cover with buttered paper and cook for 20 minutes. Covering traps steam so the fillets cook gently and stay moist. Overcooking dries out the delicate flesh of mackerel, so the time and oven heat need watching.

“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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