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To Dress Fish with Brown Sauce

A fish is seasoned and cooked with a brown sauce made from butter, onions, wine, catsup, and Worcester sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Jacqueline Harrison Smith (ed.) · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Dress Fish with Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Take a well cleaned fish and lay it in a pan on a slow fire.

  2. Flour it well, add pepper, salt, mace and cloves with parsley, and sweet marjoram chopped fine. Adjust to taste and according to the size of the fish.

Make the brown sauce

  1. Fry 8 Bermuda onions in half a pound of butter until nicely fried, not scorched, then add 2 wineglasses of port or white wine, and a wineglass of catsup, or ½ glass of Worcester sauce.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

160Calories
2 gProtein
12 gFat
13 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 8 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Saucenot in our table0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Jacqueline Harrison Smith (ed.). Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Bermuda onions
Sweetness and browning as their sugars caramelise in the butter.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and browns the onions evenly.
Port
Adds sweetness and depth, and its liquid lifts the browned bits from the pan.
Worcester sauce
Adds savoury tang and acidity that balances the rich butter.

The step that matters

Frying the onions. Onion sugars brown quickly and then turn bitter once scorched. Frying gently until golden keeps the sauce sweet and smooth rather than acrid.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, sauce, pepper, clove, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, sauce, pepper, clove, parsley. 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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