Skip to main content
Main

Red Snapper a LA Bearnaise

Red Snapper à la Béarnaise is a fish dish cooked with onions, herbs, larding pork, butter, and lard, served with Béarnaise or egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 Snapper a LA Bearnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean, wash, and dry the fish.

  2. Season the fish with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Slice the onions and lay half in a fish kettle.

  4. Place the fish on top of the onions.

  5. Add the remaining onions inside and on top of the fish.

  6. Add parsley and thyme.

  7. Cover the fish and let it stand for 1 hour.

  8. Remove the fish and discard the onions, parsley, and thyme.

Cook

  1. Place larding pork in the kettle and on top of the drainer.

  2. Lay the fish on top of the pork.

  3. Pour 1 ounce of butter over the fish.

  4. Add 1 ounce of butter inside the fish.

  5. Add lard to the bottom of the kettle.

  6. Cover the fish with buttered paper.

  7. Place the cover on the kettle.

  8. Cook over moderate heat for 1 hour until done.

  9. Transfer the fish to a warm dish.

Serve

  1. Garnish with parsley and fried oysters or scallops.

  2. Serve with Béarnaise or egg sauce.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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 snapper
Is the main protein, cooked gently until flaky and moist in the covered kettle.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the fish as it cooks.
Larding pork
Bastes the fish with fat as it cooks, keeping the flesh moist.
Onions
Hold the fish above the base and perfume it with their aromatic flavor as they steam.
Lard
Adds fat to the kettle base, helping the fish cook without sticking and staying moist.

The step that matters

Cooking over moderate heat for 1 hour until done. Fish proteins set and turn opaque at moderate temperatures, and overcooking makes them dry and firm. Checking for doneness at the end of the time protects the delicate texture.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (snapper, lemon, onion, parsley, thyme, pork, butter):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Fennelfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against snapper, lemon, onion, parsley, thyme, pork, butter. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes