Name: To Boil Grey Mullet
Ingredients: grey mullet; cold water; anchovy sauce or caper fish sauce; melted butter

Why it works: Anchovy and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,697 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Boil Grey Mullet

Ingredients

grey mullet
cold water
anchovy sauce or caper fish sauce
melted butter

Directions

Place the grey mullet in cold water.
Boil according to the size of the fish, similar to cooking whitings or haddocks for smaller fish.
Serve with anchovy or caper fish sauce and melted butter.

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.

Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,697 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Grey mullet: Is the main protein, cooked gently in water until it turns flaky and moist.
Melted butter: Adds richness and fat that complements the mild, boiled fish.
Anchovy sauce or caper fish sauce: Adds salty, sharp flavour that cuts through the richness of the fish.

“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.