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Broiled Red Mullets

Broiled red mullets served with a shallot, sherry, and Spanish sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Broiled Red Mullets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Dry the fish on a clean cloth and season with salt, pepper, grated parsley, and a few drops of lemon juice.

  2. Wrap each fish in well-oiled paper and place on a grill.

Broil and make the sauce

  1. Broil over a clear flame, turning when done on one side.

  2. Finely chop the shallots and fry them in a small amount of salad oil.

  3. Add sherry and Spanish sauce to the shallots and boil gently for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Remove the fish from the paper and place on a hot dish.

  2. Skim the fat off the sauce, pour it over the fish, and serve 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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Red mullets
The main fish, which cooks through and becomes tender under the broiler.
Shallots
Soften in oil and add a mild, sweet onion flavour to the sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce as it simmers and reduces.
Spanish sauce
Forms the body of the sauce, giving it richness and a thicker texture.

The step that matters

Wrapping the fish in oiled paper before broiling. The oiled paper keeps the delicate fish moist and stops it sticking to the grill, so it steams gently in its own juices rather than drying out over the flame.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley, lemon, sherry, sauce. 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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