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Baked Mullet

Baked Mullet is a fish dish baked with breadcrumbs, lemon, butter, and milk or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Baked Mullet

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Fillet the fish, wash and dry it well.

  2. Place the fillets in a greased pie dish.

Layer and bake

  1. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  2. Repeat the layers and add milk or water.

  3. Dot the top with butter and cover with greased paper.

  4. Bake for 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. 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 gently under the crumb layers.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crust-like layer that soaks up juices and helps the top brown lightly.
Butter or dripping
Adds fat and richness, and helps the top brown as it melts over the surface.
Milk or water
Adds moisture so the fish steams gently and the breadcrumbs stay moist.

The step that matters

Covering with greased paper. The cover traps steam so the fish cooks gently and stays moist. Without it, the surface can dry out before the fish is cooked through.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Mangofits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, milk. 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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