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Red Mullet

A baked red mullet served with a butter‑flour sauce flavored with soy sauce, anchovy essence, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Red Mullet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and bake

  1. Scrape and wash the red mullet.

  2. Fold the fish in buttered paper and place it in a baking dish.

  3. Bake gently until cooked through.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the fish juices with a piece of butter and a dusting of flour.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of soy sauce, 2 teaspoons of essence of anchovy, and a splash of white wine.

  3. Boil the sauce until thickened and serve in a butter dish.

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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Red mullet
The main protein, cooked gently in buttered paper so it stays moist.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and enriches the sauce as it is finished.
Flour
Thickens the sauce together with the fish juices as it boils.
Soy sauce
Adds savoury depth and salty umami to the sauce.
Essence of anchovy
Adds a concentrated savoury, salty flavour to the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce until thickened. Flour needs to boil for the starch to swell and thicken the sauce; stopping early leaves it thin and tasting of raw flour.

“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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