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Stewed Carp

A fish stew made with carp, broth, herbs, claret, Harvey sauce, and thickened with flour, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Carp

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fish

  1. Place the cleaned carp in a stew pan and cover with broth.

  2. Add sweet herbs and stew gently until cooked.

  3. Remove the fish and strain the broth.

Make the sauce

  1. Season the broth with salt, claret, and Harvey sauce.

  2. Thicken the broth with brown thickening or flour mixed with water and add chopped parsley.

  3. Skim off any fat and pour the sauce over the fish.

Serve

  1. Serve with small snippets of fried bread and optional mushrooms.

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. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

  4. Fish + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together444 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Carp
Provides the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the broth until tender.
Brown thickening or flour
Thickens the broth into a sauce by swelling with heat and giving it body.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour that balances the richness of the fish and sauce.
Harvey sauce
Adds savoury, tangy depth to the broth through its fermented, concentrated flavour.

The step that matters

Thicken the broth gradually. Flour or brown thickening must be mixed smoothly with water before it goes into the hot broth, otherwise it clumps. Starch thickens as it heats, so the sauce should simmer briefly to reach full body.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, sauce, flour, bread, mushroom):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, sauce, flour, bread, mushroom. 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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