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Spanish Mackerel

A baked Spanish mackerel seasoned with salt, pepper, lemon, bacon, flour, butter, and cream, served hot with creamed Irish potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Spanish Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the fish inside and out with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Place the fish in a baking pan with slices of lemon and bacon.

  3. Sprinkle the fish with flour.

Cook

  1. Add 2 tablespoons of butter and ½ cup of cream to the fish.

  2. Cover the pan well to cook the fish evenly on both sides.

  3. Just before serving, brown the fish slightly.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with creamed Irish potatoes.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Spanish mackerel
Provides the main body of the dish, cooking through to flaky, moist flesh.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the fish as it cooks.
Flour
Coats the fish, helping the surface brown and the cream sauce thicken.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surface brown.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, forming a sauce with the pan juices.

The step that matters

Just before serving, brown the fish slightly.. Browning relies on the Maillard reaction, which needs dry surface heat. Browning too long can dry out the flesh and scorch the butter and cream, so watch closely for a light golden color.

“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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