Skip to main content
Main

Red Mullet En Papillote

A whole red mullet cooked in parchment with duxelle, tomato sauce, mushrooms, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Red Mullet En Papillote

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grease a 10-inch by 10-inch Soyer paper bag well inside and out.

  2. Season the red mullet with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Place a little duxelle on both sides of the fish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Put the fish in the bag side by side.

  2. Add the tomato sauce, mushrooms, and lemon juice to the bag.

  3. Seal the bag and place it on a grid in the oven.

  4. Bake for 25 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red mullet
The main protein, which cooks gently in its own steam inside the sealed bag.
Duxelle
Finely chopped mushrooms that add moisture and concentrated savory flavor to the fish.
Tomato sauce
Adds moisture and acidity, helping keep the fish tender as it steams.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the fish and sauce.

The step that matters

Sealing the bag. A tight seal traps steam so the fish cooks gently in its own moisture. If the bag leaks, steam escapes, the fish can dry out, and the sauce may not reduce into a flavorful liquid.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, tomato, sauce, mushroom):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, tomato, sauce, mushroom. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes