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Red Mullet, Baked

Baked red mullet with lemon, mushrooms, shallots, carrot, parsley, white wine, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Red Mullet, Baked

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash the mullet and rub it well with lemon juice.

  2. Place the mullet in a tin dish with the mushroom, shallots, carrot, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  3. Pour the white wine over the fish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 45 minutes, basting constantly with melted butter.

  2. Serve with the sauce poured over the mullet.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Red mullet
Forms the main body of the dish as the fish that cooks through in the oven.
White wine
Adds acidity and moisture, creating a liquid that steams the fish and forms the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and basting with it helps the surface brown and stay moist.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion aroma that flavours the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Basting constantly with melted butter. Frequent basting coats the fish with fat and liquid, which keeps the flesh moist as it bakes and helps the surface turn golden instead of drying out.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, mushroom, shallot, carrot, parsley, white wine, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, mushroom, shallot, carrot, parsley, white wine, butter. 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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