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Another Way to Stew Fish

A fish stew featuring sliced onions, forcemeat balls, and a lemony sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Another Way to Stew Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the onions in water until tender, then strain and slice them.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the fish slices, water, salt, pepper, ginger, and mace; bring to a boil for 15 minutes.

Make the balls and stew

  1. Add the sliced onions and forcemeat balls made from chopped fish, grated bread, chopped onion, parsley, marjoram, mace, pepper, ginger, and 5 beaten eggs.

  2. Drop the balls into the boiling fish mixture and cover for 10 minutes.

Finish the sauce

  1. Remove from heat and stir in 6 eggs and the juice of 5 lemons slowly.

  2. Simmer gently, stirring until just boiling, then remove from heat to prevent the sauce from breaking.

  3. Optionally, add a little butter or sweet oil to the balls for extra flavor.

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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + marjoramtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs bind the fish balls and, stirred in later, thicken the sauce as it gently sets.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the rich fish broth and balances the eggs.
Grated bread
Soaks up moisture and gives the forcemeat balls a tender, cohesive texture.
Onions
Boiled and sliced, they add sweetness and body to the stew.
Fish
Provides the main flavor and protein of both the slices and the forcemeat balls.

The step that matters

Stirring in the eggs and lemon juice. Eggs thickened with acid can curdle or break if they boil. Adding them off the heat and simmering gently only until just boiling keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, ginger, fish, bread, parsley, marjoram):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, ginger, fish, bread, parsley, marjoram. 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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