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Fresh Mackerel

A dish of fresh mackerel simmered with herbs, butter, soup stock, then dredged in flour and finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Fresh Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the mackerel.

  2. Scald the herbs, then chop the herbs finely.

Cook

  1. Combine the herbs with butter and soup stock in a stew pan.

  2. Add the mackerel to the pan and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the mackerel to a hot dish.

  4. Dredge the fish with flour.

  5. Season the fish with salt, cayenne, and lemon juice.

Finish and serve

  1. Add cream to the pan and bring the pan to a boil.

  2. Pour the cream over the fish.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Mackerel
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the flavour of the herbs and sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the herb sauce, carrying flavour and giving a smooth texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the pan sauce.
Flour
Light coating on the fish that helps the surface hold on to the sauce.
Herbs
Provide aroma and fresh flavour to the stock and butter sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 10 minutes. Boiling vigorously can break up the delicate fish and toughen its protein, so a gentle simmer keeps the mackerel moist and intact while it cooks through.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, cream. 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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