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Red Snapper with Tomato Sauce

A whole red snapper cooked in a tomato and cream sauce, seasoned with pepper and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Red Snapper with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Rub the scaled fish inside and out with black pepper.

  2. Wrap the fish in a cloth and keep it on ice for several hours.

Poach the fish

  1. Boil the chopped onions, carrot, and celery root in 1 quart of water.

  2. Add the fish to the boiling water, ensuring it is almost covered.

  3. Add the butter and chopped tomatoes, and boil until the fins easily come off.

  4. Carefully place the cooked fish on a platter.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Strain the sauce and bring it to a boil.

  2. Mix the fresh cream with the flour, then add to the boiling sauce.

  3. Garnish the fish with chopped parsley and pour the sauce over it.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red snapper
Forms the main body of the dish; cooks gently in the poaching liquid to stay moist and flaky.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the sauce, giving it a fresh, tangy flavor.
Fresh cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream so the sauce coats the fish.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic flavor to the poaching liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and flour to the boiling sauce. Flour mixed into cream should be whisked smooth before it goes into boiling liquid, or it can clump. Once the sauce is at a boil, it thickens as the starch swells, so it needs stirring to keep an even, smooth texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (snapper, pepper, carrot, celery, egg, butter, tomato):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against snapper, pepper, carrot, celery, egg, butter, tomato. 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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