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Red Mullet Baked

Baked red mullet served with a butter‑flour sauce seasoned with salt, cayenne, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Red Mullet Baked

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Score the fish.

  3. Fold the fish in buttered or oiled parchment paper.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Bake the fish slowly in the oven until done.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the fish drippings with 1 ounce of butter.

  3. Thicken the mixture with flour.

  4. Season the mixture with salt, cayenne, and parsley.

  5. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  6. Serve the sauce in a tureen.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Is the main protein, cooked gently in its parchment wrapper to stay moist.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the fish and to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce drippings into a smooth, coating consistency.

The step that matters

Bake the fish slowly in the oven until done. Gentle, slow heat in a sealed parchment packet cooks the fish through while keeping its flesh moist. Overcooking dries the flesh and causes the juices that become the sauce to be lost.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, flour, pepper. 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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