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Red-mullets, Bordeaux Fashion

A fish dish of red mullets simmered in a wine and tomato sauce with butter, lemon, and parsley.

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-mullets, Bordeaux Fashion

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fish

  1. Remove the gills from the red mullets and season them with salt.

  2. Dust the fish with flour and place them in a stewpan coated with butter or oil.

  3. Sprinkle chopped shallot over the fish and moisten with white wine.

  4. Bring the liquid to a boil, cover the stewpan, and cook on moderate heat.

  5. Once cooked, transfer the fish to a serving dish.

Make the sauce

  1. In the same stewpan, add melted glaze and bring to a boil.

  2. Strain the liquid into another stewpan and mix in tomato purée.

  3. Let the sauce boil, then remove from heat and stir in small pieces of butter.

  4. Finish the sauce with lemon juice and chopped parsley, then pour over the mullets.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red mullets
The main fish, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks gently in the covered stewpan.
Butter
Stirred into the sauce off the heat, it adds richness and a smooth, glossy body.
Tomato purée
Adds concentrated tomato flavour, colour and body to the sauce.
White wine
Moistens the pan and adds acidity and aroma as the fish cooks.
Flour
Light dusting that helps the fish brown slightly and gives the pan juices some body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Stirring butter into the sauce off the heat. If the sauce boils after the butter goes in, the butter can separate and turn greasy. Removing the pan from heat first lets the butter emulsify into a smooth, glossy sauce.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, shallot, white wine, lemon, parsley):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, shallot, white wine, lemon, parsley. 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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