Name: Red Mullet
Ingredients: 2 ounces butter; 1 or 2 pounded anchovies; pepper; 1 red mullet

Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Red Mullet

Ingredients

2 ounces butter
1 or 2 pounded anchovies
pepper
1 red mullet

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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Melt the butter in a baking dish with the pounded anchovies and pepper.

Bake and serve

Lay the red mullet in the dish and place a few small bits of butter on top.
Bake for half an hour.
Serve in the dish it was cooked in.

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.

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

Butter: Adds richness and moisture, keeping the fish from drying out as it bakes.
Anchovies: Melt into the butter to add a savoury, salty depth to the fish.
Red mullet: The main protein, which cooks gently in the buttery dish until flaky.

“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.