Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
How to Stew Fish
Ingredients
Directions
Skin the fish and place it in a stew pan.
Melt a little butter in the stew pan.
Add boiling water, sliced onions, carrot, turnip, and parsley roots.
Season with soy sauce, ketchup, pepper, and allspice.
When the fish is nearly done, squeeze a little lemon into the gravy.
Shake the pan gently and serve the fish with the gravy in a deep dish.
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.
-
Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,099 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
-
Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
-
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
-
Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,842 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
-
Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7,585 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, carrot, turnip, parsley, sauce, ketchup):
- Leekfits better
- Shallotfits better
- Horseradishfits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, carrot, turnip, parsley, sauce, ketchup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
More fish stew recipes
You might also like
The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.
Lemon Sauce236 recipes
Carrot Soup134 recipes
Fried Fish120 recipes
Fish Croquettes81 recipes