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Red Mullet a LA Voisin

A baked red mullet served with a tomato and shallot sauce, garnished with parsley and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 a LA Voisin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Trim and score the red mullet, then season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  2. Butter a baking dish and place the fish inside.

Make the tomato sauce

  1. In a pan, fry the shallot in butter until warmed but not browned.

  2. Add the tomatoes and simmer gently for about 10 minutes.

  3. Pour the tomato mixture over the fish and top with mushroom slices if available.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a large piece of paper and cover the dish.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove the paper, squeeze over the juice of half a lemon, and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

  4. Serve with plain baked potatoes.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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, cooking gently to moist, flaky flesh.
Tomatoes
Supply acidity and moisture that form a light sauce around the fish.
Butter
Carries flavour and enriches the shallot and tomato mixture with fat.
Shallot
Adds a mild, aromatic onion flavour to the sauce base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fish and balances the rich butter.

The step that matters

Fry the shallot gently. Frying the shallot in butter only until warmed, not browned, keeps its flavour mild and sweet. Browning would turn it bitter and darken the light sauce.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, lemon, butter, shallot, mushroom, parsley, potato. 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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