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Red Mullet

Baked red mullet served with a Madeira wine and Espagnole sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 and drain them dry in a clean cloth.

  2. Wrap the fish in buttered paper.

  3. Sprinkle the wrapped fish with coarse sea salt.

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

Make the sauce

  1. Fry butter, diced ham, mace, cloves, thyme, mushrooms, parsley roots, shallot, and carrot in a small saucepan over low heat until browned.

  2. Moisten the sauce with ⅓ cup of Madeira wine and add a little sugar.

  3. Reduce the wine by half.

  4. Stir in 1-2 spoonfuls of Espagnole sauce.

  5. Skim off the fat from the sauce.

  6. Pass the sauce through a fine sieve.

  7. Add ¼ pound of fresh butter and the fish gravy to the sauce.

  8. Season the sauce with salt, pepper, and lemon.

  9. If the sauce is too thin, add a bit 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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red mullet
The main fish, whose flesh is cooked gently in its wrapping.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce and the fried base.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the sauce base as it fries and browns.
Madeira wine
Adds aromatic sweetness and acidity once reduced into the sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Provides the thick brown sauce base that gives body and depth.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when mixed with butter and added to loosen it.

The step that matters

Reduce the wine by half. Cooking off the wine concentrates its flavour and removes harsh alcohol, so the sauce tastes rounded rather than sharp. Reducing too little leaves it thin and boozy.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, clove, thyme, mushroom, parsley, shallot. 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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