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Boiled Salt Mackerel

A whole salt mackerel that is soaked, boiled, and served with a butter, milk and egg cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Boiled Salt Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the fish

  1. Wash the mackerel to remove brine and salt, then soak it meat side down in cold water overnight.

  2. In the morning, rinse the fish in one or two waters.

  3. Wrap the fish in a cloth and place it in a kettle with cold water; cook for about 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Carefully remove the fish from the cloth, take out the back bones, and pour melted butter and cream over it, sprinkling with pepper.

  2. Heat the milk until scalding.

  3. Stir in the corn-starch mixed with a little water until thickened.

  4. Add butter, pepper, salt, and chopped parsley to the sauce.

  5. Beat the egg lightly, then gradually pour the sauce over it, stirring for one minute over low heat.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish and serve with lemon slices or parsley/watercress as garnish.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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; gentle simmering keeps the flesh moist and tender.
Milk
Provides the liquid base of the sauce and a mild, creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the fish and sauce.
Corn-starch
Swells with heat in the milk, thickening the sauce to a coating consistency.
Egg
Sets with gentle heat, adding body and helping to thicken and enrich the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the sauce to the egg. Egg proteins set when heated, so the sauce must be poured in gradually while stirring over low heat. This warms the egg evenly and keeps the sauce smooth instead of curdled.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

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