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How to Stew Fish

A stew of salt fish, onions, eggs, milk, and cream, seasoned with butter, flour, mustard, and cornubian sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

How to Stew Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the salt ling in water to remove excess salt.

  2. Boil the fish until just cooked, then remove and pull apart with a fork, discarding bones.

  3. Boil the onions until tender, then set aside.

  4. Slice the hard-boiled eggs.

Make the stew

  1. In a pot, mix butter and flour, then add onions, eggs, and optional mustard or cornubian sauce.

  2. Add the milk and cream, and gently boil with the fish for about 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with sliced egg on top and lemon slices around the dish.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Salt ling
Provides the main flesh and savoury flavour of the stew.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the sauce and are sliced as a garnish.
Onions
Soften during boiling and add sweetness and aroma to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the stew, giving a mild, creamy sauce.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, making the sauce smoother and silkier.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it body.

The step that matters

Gently boil with the milk and cream. Milk and cream can scorch or curdle-look if boiled hard on the base of the pot. A gentle simmer keeps the sauce smooth and the fish tender instead of breaking it up.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, onion, egg, milk, cream, butter, flour):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, onion, egg, milk, cream, butter, flour. 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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