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Red Mullet

A roasted red mullet served with a sauce of ham, spices, vegetables, and Madeira wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 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.

  2. Drain the fish thoroughly using a clean cloth.

  3. Wrap the fish in buttered paper and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven, or broil if no oven is available.

Serve the fish

  1. Serve without the paper, optionally with lobster or anchovy sauce.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry diced ham, mace, cloves, thyme, mushrooms, parsley roots, shallot, and carrot in a little butter until browned.

  2. Moisten with ⅓ cup of good Madeira wine and add a small amount of sugar.

  3. Reduce the wine by half, then add 1–2 spoonfuls of Espagnole sauce and skim off the fat.

  4. Strain the sauce and stir in ¼ pound of fresh butter and the fish gravy.

  5. Season the sauce with salt, pepper, and lemon to taste.

  6. If the sauce is too thin, add a small amount of butter mixed with flour.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  4. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 wrapping so the flesh stays moist.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce and keeps the fish from drying out.
Madeira wine
Adds a sweet, fortified depth of flavour as it reduces into the sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Gives the sauce body and a savoury, concentrated base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when mixed with butter and added to a sauce that is too thin.

The step that matters

Reduce the wine by half. Reducing concentrates the Madeira's sweetness and flavour and cooks off harsh alcohol, so the sauce tastes rounded rather than thin or sharp.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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