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Boiled Gray Mullet with White Sauce

A boiled gray mullet served with a creamy white sauce and garnished with parsley.

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 ↓

Boiled Gray Mullet with White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Fill a fish kettle with water, add salt, and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the mullet and simmer until cooked.

Make the white sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter and stir in flour over heat.

  2. Slowly pour in boiling milk, stirring until thickened.

  3. Beat egg yolks with lemon juice and strain them.

  4. Remove sauce from heat and stir in beaten eggs.

Serve

  1. Drain the mullet and place it on a hot dish garnished with parsley.

  2. Serve with the sauce in a sauceboat.

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Gray mullet
Is the main fish, cooked gently in simmering salted water until just done.
Flour
Mixed with melted butter to form a roux that thickens the milk into a smooth sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, thickened by the flour as it heats.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy body when stirred in off the heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the egg yolks.
Butter
Provides fat for the roux and adds richness and flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the beaten eggs in off the heat. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the sauce is too hot they can scramble and turn grainy. Removing the pan from the heat before adding them lets the yolks thicken gently and keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, egg, lemon. 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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