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Baked Red Mullet

Baked Red Mullet is a fish dish baked with butter, tomato sauce, parsley, bread crumbs, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Red 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Clean the fish, removing the gills but optionally leaving the trails and liver.

  3. Place the fish in a well-buttered gratin dish.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Pour the tomato sauce over the fish.

Top and bake

  1. Mix the chopped parsley with the bread crumbs and melted butter, then sprinkle the mixture over the fish.

  2. Bake for 15-20 minutes, basting frequently with the fish's juices.

  3. Serve very hot.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

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 into tender, flaky fish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the fish stay tender and the crumb topping brown.
Tomato sauce
Adds moisture and acidity, forming juices that baste the fish as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the oven and helps hold in moisture.

The step that matters

Basting with the fish's juices. Basting frequently keeps the surface moist while the fish cooks, so the flesh stays tender and does not dry out before the topping browns.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, parsley, pepper, bread. 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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