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Red Snapper À LA Barnaise

A seasoned red snapper cooked with onions, herbs, larding pork, butter, and lard, served with sauce Barnaise or egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 À LA Barnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean, wash, and dry the fish.

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

  3. Layer half the onion slices in a fish kettle drainer.

  4. Place the fish on top of the onion slices.

  5. Add the remaining onion slices 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 4 slices of larding pork in the kettle.

  2. Add a few slices of larding pork on top of the drainer.

  3. Put the fish on top of the pork.

  4. Pour 1 ounce of butter over the fish.

  5. Place 1 ounce of butter inside the fish.

  6. Add 2 tablespoons of lard to the bottom of the kettle.

  7. Cover with buttered paper.

  8. Place the lid on.

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

Serve

  1. Transfer the fish to a warm dish.

  2. Garnish with parsley and fried oysters or scallops.

  3. Serve with sauce Barnaise 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 dish, cooked whole so its flesh stays moist and tender.
Larding pork
Bastes the fish with fat as it cooks, adding moisture and savory flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the fish stay moist and carry flavor.
Lard
Provides fat for the kettle, helping the fish cook gently without drying.
Onions
Lift the fish off the base and add mild aromatic flavor as it steams.

The step that matters

Cook over moderate heat for 1 hour until done. Moderate heat cooks the whole fish through without drying the delicate flesh. Covering it with buttered paper and the lid traps steam and fat, keeping the snapper moist while it cooks.

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.

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