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Red Mullet a L’ltalienne

A red mullet fillet baked in paper with lemon, parsley, shallots, mushrooms, and Spanish sauce, then broiled and served with the sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Mullet a L’ltalienne

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wipe the fish with a dry cloth and place it on a sheet of well-buttered paper.

  2. Squeeze lemon juice over the fish.

  3. Sprinkle the fish with parsley, salt, and pepper.

  4. Fold the paper over the fish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, heat salad oil and fry the chopped shallots.

  2. Add minced mushrooms, Spanish sauce, minced parsley, and lemon juice.

  3. Boil gently for 15 minutes.

  4. Skim the fat off the sauce.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the fish on a gridiron over a clear fire until cooked.

  2. Remove the paper.

  3. Place the fish on a hot dish.

  4. Pour the sauce over the fish before serving.

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

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red mullet
The main fish, cooked gently in its paper so it stays moist.
Spanish sauce
Forms the base of the sauce, giving body and a rich savoury flavour.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and bulk to the sauce as they cook down.
Shallots
Softened in oil, they add a mild, sweet aromatic base to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fish and balances the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce gently for 15 minutes. A gentle simmer lets the sauce reduce and thicken evenly without scorching or breaking. A hard boil can scorch the bottom and make the sauce greasy or cloudy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, pepper, shallot, mushroom, 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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