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How to Stew Fish

Lampreys stewed in butter with wine, cider, gravy, and aromatic herbs.

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 from the back.

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

  3. Stew the lampreys until browned.

Stew the lampreys

  1. Prepare a mixture of gravy, white wine, cider, and claret or port wine in a pot.

  2. Add the lampreys, onion, lemon peel, and sweet herbs to the pot.

  3. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, cloves, nutmeg, mace, and cayenne.

  4. Stew over low heat until fully cooked.

Finish the sauce

  1. Pour off the liquid into a saucepan and boil with anchovies, mustard, and lemon juice.

  2. Thicken the gravy as desired.

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
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and flavourful as they cook slowly in liquid.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the lampreys and adds richness.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stewing liquid, balancing the richness of the fish.
Anchovies
Contribute deep savoury flavour to the sauce that is boiled down from the cooking liquid.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and a little pungency that balances the sauce's richness.

The step that matters

Stew over low heat until fully cooked. Gentle heat lets the lampreys cook through and become tender without the liquid boiling hard, which would toughen the flesh 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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