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Stewed Plaice

A stew of plaice pieces simmered with onions, ginger, lemon juice, water, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Stewed Plaice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Salt the fish pieces and let them sit for 1 hour.

  2. Fry the sliced onions in a pan until light brown.

  3. In a stewpan, layer the fried onions and the salted fish without washing it.

Cook

  1. Add the ground ginger, lemon juice, and water to the stewpan.

  2. Cook slowly for 1 hour without boiling the fish to prevent it from breaking.

  3. Remove the fish and let the cooking liquid cool.

Thicken and serve

  1. Stir the well-beaten eggs into the cooled liquid and simmer until it thickens.

  2. Pour the thickened sauce over the fish and serve.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  3. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Plaice
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently so it stays in pieces.
Eggs
Thicken the cooled cooking liquid into a sauce when gently simmered.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps balance the sauce.
Onions
Add sweetness and depth of flavour after frying until light brown.

The step that matters

Cook without boiling the fish. Boiling agitates delicate fish and causes it to break apart. A slow, gentle simmer keeps the pieces intact while the liquid flavours them.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, lemon, egg, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, lemon, egg, 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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