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Fish Stock

A savory stock made from butter, onion, tomato, assorted small fish, herbs, salt, pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clam and crab share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Fish Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onion and cook until browned.

  3. Stir in the sliced tomatoes and assorted small fish, and cook together until the onions are well browned.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add the sweet herbs, salt, pepper, and enough water to cover the ingredients.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Pound the mixture with a wooden pestle.

  4. Strain the stock and return it to the heat until it thickens.

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. Clam + crabtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Oyster + crabtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together95 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Small fish
Release their flavour and gelatin into the water, giving the stock body and a briny taste.
Onion
Browning builds sweetness and savoury depth that carries into the finished stock.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a rounded, slightly sweet flavour that balances the fish.
Sweet butter
Fat that softens and browns the onion, carrying flavour from the aromatics.

The step that matters

Browning the onions. Onions must brown well before water goes in; pale onions give a flat, weak stock, while properly browned ones add sweetness and colour through the Maillard reaction.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, fish, oyster, clam, smelt, crab):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, fish, oyster, clam, smelt, crab. 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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