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Red Mullet, Baked

Baked red mullet served with a butter, sherry, and anchovy essence sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Red Mullet, Baked

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash and dry the red mullet without scaling or opening it.

  2. Cut off the fins and remove the gills and small intestine.

  3. Oil sheets of unglazed paper and bake them for 2-3 minutes to harden.

Wrap and bake

  1. Place a piece of butter on each paper, sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  2. Lay the fish on the butter, add a little more butter, fold the paper, and secure the ends.

  3. Place the wrapped fish in a baking tin and bake in a moderate oven (350°F/175°C) for about 30 minutes.

  4. Serve with a squeeze of lemon juice.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine melted butter, pan gravy, salt, cayenne, sherry, and essence of anchovies in a saucepan.

  2. Boil once and serve in a tureen.

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

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

  2. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Pepper + sherrytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Red mullet
Is the main protein, cooked gently in its paper wrapping so it stays moist.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the fish steam gently inside the paper.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce, balancing the richness of the butter.
Essence of anchovies
Adds a savoury, salty depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Wrapping the fish in paper. The paper must be sealed tightly at the ends so steam builds up inside and cooks the fish gently; a loose wrap lets the steam escape and the fish dries out.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Plumfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, sherry. 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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