Skip to main content
Main

Tench Stew

A stew of tench fish simmered in fish stock and sherry, finished with a butter‑flour sauce and cayenne, garnished with veal forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Tench Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Combine the tench, fish stock, sherry, salt, pepper, and bay leaf in a stewpan.

  2. Let the mixture stew gently for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the tench from the stew.

  4. Keep the tench hot on a dish.

  5. Strain the cooking liquid.

Thicken and serve

  1. Thicken the strained liquid with butter and flour kneaded together.

  2. Cook the thickened sauce for 10 minutes.

  3. If the sauce is not smooth, strain it through a fine sieve.

  4. Add a pinch of cayenne.

  5. Pour the sauce over the fish.

  6. Garnish with veal forcemeat balls.

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. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Fish + vealtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

Tench
The main fish, which gently poaches in the stock to become tender and flavourful.
Fish stock
Forms the cooking liquid that becomes the base of the sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the stewing liquid.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and smooth richness when cooked with flour.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquid into a sauce with body.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with butter and flour. Kneaded butter and flour must be cooked long enough to lose their raw starch taste and must be whisked in so lumps do not form. Cooking the sauce further, as the method directs, helps it thicken evenly and become smooth.

“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

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes