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Red Mullet in Cases

Baked red mullet served in buttered paper cases with sherry, fine herbs sauce, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,505 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Red Mullet in Cases

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Scale, trim, and remove gills from the red mullet. Wash and dry them.

  2. Place each fish in a case of buttered paper and secure well.

  3. Grease a baking tin and place the fish inside.

Bake and serve

  1. Add sherry and Fine Herbs Sauce to the tin.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

  3. Add another ⅓ cup of Fine Herbs Sauce and a squeeze of lemon.

  4. Return to the oven until hot and serve in the baking tin with sauce on each plate.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

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

  5. Sherry + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently in its paper case to stay moist.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma, and helps create steam that keeps the fish moist.
Fine herbs sauce
Provides moisture and herb flavour that soaks into the fish as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and keeps the fish from sticking to the paper and tin.

The step that matters

Securing the buttered paper cases. If the paper is not sealed well, steam escapes and the fish dries out in the oven instead of cooking gently in its own juices.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pineapplefits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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