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Broiled Salt Mackerel

Broiled mackerel served with a butter, lemon, pickle, and pepper 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
Melts into the sauce and adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter and fish.
Small cucumber pickle
Contributes tangy, salty flavour and a crisp texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Drying the fish before broiling. Surface moisture must be removed so the skin can brown rather than steam. Patting the fish dry before it goes under the heat helps it take on colour and a crisper finish.

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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