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An Excellent Way to Dress Fish

Fried fish served in a tomato, wine, and mushroom ketchup sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

An Excellent Way to Dress Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Dredge the fish in flour and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  2. Fry the fish until golden brown and set aside to cool.

Make the sauce

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter.

  2. Add the tomatoes, parsley, and chopped onion, and fry until done.

  3. Add enough water to create a sauce and season with pepper, salt, and pounded cloves.

  4. Stir in some wine and mushroom ketchup.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the fish to the sauce and heat thoroughly before serving.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Fish
Main protein; flour coating helps it brown when fried.
Flour
Dry coating that browns during frying and helps the fish keep its shape.
Butter
Fat for frying that adds richness and flavor to the sauce.
Tomatoes
Provide the base of the sauce, adding acidity, body, and moisture.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the sauce as it simmers.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savory, umami depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the fish in the sauce thoroughly. The fish was already fried and cooled, so it only needs gentle heating in the sauce. Overheating or long simmering can make it dry and break it apart, while underheating leaves it cold in the middle.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, flour, pepper, butter, tomato, parsley, clove):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, flour, pepper, butter, tomato, parsley, clove. 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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