Name: Red Mullet, Marinaded and Broiled
Ingredients: 4 red mullet; 2 teaspoons lemon juice; 2 teaspoons salad oil; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; 2 shallots, finely minced; butter for folding

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Red Mullet, Marinaded and Broiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Prepare the mullet by cleaning and gutting them.
Rub each fish with lemon juice and salad oil.
Sprinkle pepper, salt, and nutmeg over the fish.
Place the fish in a dish.
Top the fish with chopped parsley and minced shallots.
Let the fish marinate for three hours.

Cook

Fold the fish in buttered paper.
Broil the fish for 20 to 25 minutes.

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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, cooked whole so its flesh stays moist under heat.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the fish and helps flavours from the marinade penetrate.
Salad oil: Coats the fish to add moisture and help prevent it from drying out under the broiler.
Shallots: Add a mild, sweet onion-like aroma that infuses the fish during marinating.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, enriching the fish as it cooks in the buttered paper.

The step that matters

Folding the fish in buttered paper before broiling. Wrapping the fish seals in moisture so it steams gently while the outside cooks. If the paper is unbuttered, torn, or left open, the fish can dry out and stick under the high heat of the broiler.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, butter):

Shallotthe original
Carrotfits about as well
Spinachfits about as well
Parsnipfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, 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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Red Mullet, Marinaded and Broiled