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Broiled Salt Mackerel

Broiled mackerel served with a butter, lemon or vinegar, hot water, pepper, and cucumber pickle sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Broiled Salt Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the mackerel overnight with the skin side up.

  2. In the morning, dry the fish carefully.

Broil and serve

  1. Place the fish on a buttered fish gridiron and broil until light brown.

  2. Transfer to a hot dish.

  3. Melt the butter and mix in lemon juice or vinegar, hot water, black pepper, and chopped pickle.

  4. Pour the sauce over the broiled mackerel.

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. Lemon + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + cucumbertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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, cooked by broiling until lightly browned.
Butter
Melted into the sauce to add richness and carry the flavours.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the fish's richness.
Cucumber pickle
Adds tangy, crunchy bits to the sauce for contrast with the fish.

The step that matters

Broil until light brown. Broiling is fast and intense, so the fish can dry out or scorch quickly. Watching for a light golden colour, rather than deep browning, keeps the flesh moist and tender.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon, pepper. 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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