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How to Stew Fish

A stew of lampreys cooked with butter, wine, cider, herbs, and spices, finished with anchovy, mustard, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

How to Stew Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lampreys

  1. Split open the lampreys and remove the gristle.

  2. Fry the lampreys in butter until about three-quarters cooked.

Stew

  1. In a pot, combine the lampreys with butter, gravy, white wine, cider, claret or port wine, onion, lemon peel, and sweet herbs.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, cloves, nutmeg, mace, and cayenne.

  3. Stew over low heat until fully cooked.

Finish the sauce and serve

  1. Pour off the liquid into a saucepan.

  2. Boil with anchovies, mustard, and lemon juice.

  3. Thicken the gravy as desired.

  4. Serve.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. White wine + port winetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Cider + port winetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together41 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  5. White wine + cidertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together194 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Lampreys
The main protein; frying first firms the flesh before the long stew.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the lampreys brown during the initial frying.
Gravy
Supplies savoury body and moisture to the stew liquid.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the stewed liquid.
Claret or port wine
Adds deep colour, fruity sweetness and body to the sauce.
Anchovies
Contribute salty, savoury depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stew over low heat until fully cooked. Gentle heat cooks the fish through without toughening its protein, while the liquid slowly absorbs flavour. Rapid boiling would make the flesh tough and break it apart.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, white wine, cider, port wine, lemon, pepper, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, white wine, cider, port wine, lemon, pepper, 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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