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Red Mullet, Filleted and Fried

Fried fillets of red mullet served with a liver sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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, Filleted and Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Scrape the red mullet lightly, cut off their heads, and open the flesh to remove the insides, preserving the liver.

  2. Divide each fish in half and lift the flesh from the bones to create two fillets per mullet.

  3. Dry the fillets.

  4. Dust the fillets with flour.

  5. Dip the fillets into the beaten eggs.

  6. Coat the fillets with seasoned bread crumbs or a light frying batter.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry the fillets in hot fat until lightly browned on both sides, about 10 minutes.

  2. Beat the boiled livers with a wooden spoon until smooth.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the livers with ⅓ cup of thin melted butter made from the water used to boil the livers.

  4. Stir the sauce over heat until thick.

  5. Season the sauce with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  6. Add 2 teaspoons of lemon juice and ½ cup of claret just before serving, if desired.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Red mullet
The main fish, whose fillets are fried to a golden, crisp-edged finish.
Eggs
Bind the flour and bread crumb coating so it adheres to the fillets while frying.
Seasoned bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust on the fried fillets.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the liver sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and butter sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the liver sauce until thick. Liver and butter emulsify and thicken gently over heat; too much heat can curdle or split the sauce, so it should be stirred steadily and kept at a low simmer.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, bread, butter, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, bread, butter, pepper. 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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