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Red Mullet, Fried

Fried red mullet seasoned with lemon, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add the mullet and squeeze the lemon juice over them.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Fry over gentle heat until cooked, turning halfway through.

  5. Serve on a hot dish, plain or with melted butter, Dutch sauce, or anchovy 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Mullet
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through to flaky, tender flesh.
Butter
Conducts heat in the pan and adds richness and browning to the fish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich butter and fish.

The step that matters

Fry over gentle heat until cooked, turning halfway through. Gentle heat cooks the fish through without drying or burning the butter, and turning once helps both sides cook evenly. Overly high heat can scorch the butter and leave the flesh tough before the centre is done.

“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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