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Red Mullet

A baked red mullet served with optional lobster or anchovy sauce and a Génévoise sauce made from ham, spices, and Madeira wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,108 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Red Mullet

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 the fish

  1. Wash the red mullet well without emptying them and drain them dry in a clean cloth.

  2. Wrap the fish in buttered paper with a little coarse sea salt.

Make the Génévoise sauce

  1. For Génévoise sauce, melt a bit of butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Add diced ham, mace, cloves, thyme, mushrooms, parsley roots, shallot, and carrot; fry until slightly brown.

  3. Moisten with Madeira wine and add a little sugar; reduce the wine by half.

  4. Stir in Spanish sauce and skim off the fat; strain the sauce.

  5. Add about ½ cup of fresh butter and the fish gravy, seasoning with salt, pepper, and lemon.

  6. If the sauce is too thin, thicken with a small bit of butter and a little flour.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400 °F (200 °C) or broil if you don't have an oven.

  2. Serve with lobster sauce or anchovy sauce, removing the paper before serving.

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. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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, which turns moist and flaky when cooked gently in paper.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the fish and the sauce.
Diced ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the sauce base as it fries.
Mushrooms
Add earthy, savoury flavour and body to the sauce.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and depth as it reduces into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells and sets in hot liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce gently. Flour thickens by swelling and setting in hot liquid. Whisking it in over gentle heat and simmering long enough avoids lumps and lets the starch fully cook, removing any raw floury taste.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lobster, sauce, ham, clove, thyme, mushroom):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lobster, sauce, ham, clove, thyme, mushroom. 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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