Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Whiting

Stewed whiting with butter, marsala, lemon, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Stewed Whiting

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin, heads, and tails from the whiting.

  2. Season each fish with salt, pepper, herbs, and lemon rind.

Stew

  1. Place the fish in a stewpan. Add melted butter.

  2. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Add marsala and lemon juice. Simmer for 5 more minutes.

Serve

  1. Arrange the fish on a hot dish. Pour the sauce over them.

  2. Serve immediately.

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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. White pepper + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Whiting + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together510 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Whiting + lemontop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. White pepper + buttertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Whiting
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently in the liquid until flaky and tender.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour into the fish while it stews.
Marsala
Adds wine-based acidity and aroma that flavours the sauce as it reduces.
Lemon juice
Brightens the sauce with acidity that balances the butter and wine.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after adding the marsala and lemon juice. A gentle simmer keeps the delicate whiting tender and intact. Boiling vigorously can toughen the proteins and break the fish apart, while the wine and juice flavour the sauce as it reduces slightly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, lemon, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, lemon, butter. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes