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How to Stew Fish

A stew made with cod heads and tongues, veal broth, onions, butter, flour, cream, lemon, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

  1. Prepare the cod's heads and tongues as directed and boil them until half done.

Make the stew

  1. In a pot, combine veal broth, boiled onions, butter rolled in flour, cream, and lemon peel.

  2. Add the heads and tongues to the pot and let them stew gently for about 20 minutes.

  3. Season with nutmeg, cayenne pepper, and salt.

Serve

  1. Garnish with sliced lemon before serving.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cod's heads and tongues
Provide the main protein and body of the stew as they cook gently.
Flour
Thickens the cream and broth into a smooth, velvety sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, softening the flavor and texture of the stew.
Boiled onions
Add sweetness and savory depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the flour-butter mixture to the pot. Flour mixed with butter, if added directly to hot liquid without being well dispersed, clumps and forms lumps. Whisking it in gradually keeps the sauce smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, lemon, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, lemon, nutmeg, pepper. 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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