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How to Stew Fish

A stew of sturgeon slices cooked in veal broth with onions, sweet herbs, wine, and a butter‑flour‑cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

How to Stew Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the sturgeon

  1. Fry the sturgeon slices until half cooked.

  2. Place the fried sturgeon in a stew pan with veal broth, onion, and sweet herbs.

  3. Allow to stew until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. In the butter used for frying, fry 1-2 onions.

  2. Add the fried onions, stew gravy, and wine to a saucepan.

  3. Stir in butter rolled in flour and cream.

  4. Boil the mixture.

  5. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish.

  2. Garnish with sliced lemon.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + ketchuptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Sturgeon
Forms the main body of the stew and holds its shape while stewing until tender.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the fish rather than running off.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the richness of the butter and cream.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and savoury depth when fried and stewed into the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the sauce after adding the cream. Once the butter-flour mixture and cream are in, boiling thickens the sauce through starch gelatinisation. Cream can split or curdle if it is overheated, so keep the heat controlled and stir steadily.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sturgeon, veal, butter, wine, flour, cream, ketchup):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sturgeon, veal, butter, wine, flour, cream, ketchup. 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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