Skip to main content
Main

Broiled Spanish Mackerel

Broiled Spanish mackerel served with a butter‑lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Broiled Spanish Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Split the fish down the back and remove the backbone.

  2. Wash the fish in cold water and dry it with a clean cloth.

  3. Sprinkle the fish lightly with coarse sea salt.

Grill and serve

  1. Lay the fish on a buttered grill with the flesh side down over a clear fire until it begins to brown.

  2. Turn the fish to cook the other side.

  3. Mix together the melted butter, lemon juice, salt, and black pepper.

  4. Serve the fish hot on a warm dish, pouring the mixture over it.

  5. For the sauce, beat together the melted butter, lemon juice, chopped parsley, and white pepper until well combined.

  6. Serve the sauce hot alongside the fish.

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 + parsleytop 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Spanish mackerel + saucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Parsley + white peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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 into flaky, tender flesh over the fire.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, carrying flavour and helping the fish brown lightly on the grill.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the fish's flavour.

The step that matters

Grilling the flesh side down. Starting flesh side down over a clear, steady fire lets the flesh set and brown before turning. Too hot a fire or turning too early can scorch the skin or tear the flesh apart.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spanish mackerel, butter, lemon, pepper, sauce, parsley):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spanish mackerel, butter, lemon, pepper, sauce, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesSpanish PicklesSpanish Pickles58 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes