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Surmulet

A grilled fish served with a white sauce, optionally flavored with liver.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and liver work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and 79 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dry the fish thoroughly.

  2. Preheat the grill until hot.

Cook and serve

  1. Grill the fish until cooked through.

  2. For the sauce, mix the white sauce with the finely crushed liver of the fish for a pink hue, if desired.

  3. Serve the fish with the sauce.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Fish + livertop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together79 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Fish + saucetop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together1,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + livertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together499 recipes

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Surmullet (in the method)
The main fish, which is cooked through on the grill.
White sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy, rich coating to the grilled fish.

The step that matters

Grill the fish until cooked through. Fish cooks quickly and can dry out or stay underdone if heat or timing is off. Drying the fish first helps it brown rather than steam on the grill.

“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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