Skip to main content
Main

Grey Mullet Broiled

Broiled grey mullet seasoned with salt, oil, parsley, butter, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Grey Mullet Broiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove gills and scales, and clean the inside of the fish.

  2. Wash and wipe the fish dry.

  3. Score the fish on each side a dozen times, about ¼ inch deep.

  4. Place the fish on a dish and sprinkle with a little coarse sea salt.

  5. Pour 3 tablespoons of oil over the fish.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the fish on a moderate clear fire for 10 minutes on each side.

  2. Serve the fish on a dish with parsley and butter, and drizzle with a little lemon juice.

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 + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Grey mullet
The main fish; its firm flesh holds together under high heat.
Oil
Coats the skin and helps it brown and crisp under the broiler.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the finished fish.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavour of the fish and butter.

The step that matters

Scoring the fish. Cuts across the flesh let heat penetrate the thick parts evenly, so the centre cooks through as the outside browns. Shallow, even cuts keep the fish from drying out.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes