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Red or Grey Mullet

A mullet baked in a buttered paper bag with tomato, mushroom, parsley, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 or Grey Mullet

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Prepare a paper bag by buttering it thoroughly.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the fish inside the bag with the chopped tomato, mushroom, salt, pepper, lemon juice or vinegar, flour (if using), parsley, and butter.

  2. Seal the bag and cook in the oven for 20 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately after cooking.

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

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Mullet
Is the main protein, cooked gently in its own steam inside the sealed bag.
Mushroom
Releases moisture as it cooks, adding juiciness and savoury flavour to the fish.
Tomato
Adds moisture and mild acidity that flavour the fish as it steams.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and keeps the fish moist during baking.

The step that matters

Seal the bag and cook in the oven for 20 minutes.. A tightly sealed bag traps steam so the fish cooks gently in its own juices. If the seal leaks, moisture escapes and the fish can dry out.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, lemon, flour, 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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