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Baked Stuffed Mullet

A baked mullet stuffed with a filling, served with white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 26,984 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Baked Stuffed Mullet

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the fish and wipe it well inside and out.

  2. Sprinkle the fish with salt and pepper.

  3. Stuff the fish.

  4. Sew the fish closed.

Bake

  1. Grease a baking dish.

  2. Pour in the water or milk.

  3. Place the fish in the baking dish.

  4. Cover the fish with greased paper.

  5. Bake for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with white 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. Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Pepper + saucetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + saucetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Pepper and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mullet
The main fish, which is stuffed, sewn closed and baked whole.
Dripping
Adds fat that enriches flavour and helps the fish brown slightly.
Water or milk
Creates moist steam in the dish, keeping the fish from drying out while it bakes.
White sauce
Adds creaminess and moisture alongside the baked fish.

The step that matters

Cover the fish with greased paper. The paper traps steam around the fish so it cooks gently and stays moist, while the grease stops it sticking to the paper.

“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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