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Broiled Mackerel

Broiled mackerel seasoned with salt, pepper, oil, and butter‑parsley‑lemon mixture, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Broiled Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the mackerel clean and dry after removing the gills and insides.

  2. Open the back and season with pepper, salt, and oil.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil over a clear fire, turning it on both sides and the back until cooked, about 10 minutes for a small mackerel.

  2. Chop parsley and mix it with butter, pepper, salt, and a squeeze of lemon juice.

  3. Stuff the mixture into the back of the mackerel and serve before the butter melts.

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

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

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

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

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 and carries the flavour of the other ingredients.
Butter
Melts into the fish and adds richness and moisture while it is served warm.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty flavour of the mackerel and butter.

The step that matters

Broil over a clear fire, turning on both sides and the back. Mackerel is fatty and thin-fleshed, so turning it carefully helps it cook evenly without drying out. Stopping once it is cooked keeps the flesh moist and tender.

“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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