A recipe from a manuscript at Holkham.

‘To dight a freche makerelle tak and draw a makerelle at the gil and let the belly be hole and wefche him and mak the sauce of water and salt and when it boilithe cast in mynt and parsly and put in the fifshe and ferve it furthe with sorell sauce.’

A really fresh mackerel cooked and served like this is superb, as good today as it was almost 500 years ago when the clerk at Holkham wrote out this simple recipe.