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Filets of Fish with Spanish Sauce

Filets of fish served with a sauce made from bacon, carrot, onion, tomato, flour, and water or brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Filets of Fish with Spanish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cut the bacon into small dice.

  2. Fry the diced bacon in a saucepan with the drippings.

  3. Add the chopped carrot, onion, and tomato.

  4. Cook until browned.

  5. Stir in the flour and let it brown.

  6. Add the hot water or brown gravy.

  7. Season the sauce with salt and pepper.

  8. Let the sauce simmer for nearly an hour, skimming it clear.

  9. Once the vegetables are soft, strain the sauce through a sieve.

  10. Check the seasoning.

Bake and serve

  1. Prepare the fish filets as directed.

  2. Bake the filets for about 20 minutes.

  3. Keep the filets warm.

  4. Pour some sauce over the fish.

  5. Serve the remaining sauce in a sauce-boat.

  6. Garnish the fish with parsley.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Blue fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked by baking until tender.
Flour
Browns with the fat and thickens the sauce into a smooth body.
Bacon fat
Carries flavour and browns the vegetables at the start of the sauce.
Onion
Softens and sweetens during cooking, adding depth to the sauce.
Carrot
Softens and adds subtle sweetness and body to the sauce.
Tomato
Adds acidity and savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour must be cooked until it turns golden in the fat; undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste, while over-browning gives a bitter flavour and weaker thickening.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, carrot, tomato, flour, pepper, parsley):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, carrot, tomato, flour, pepper, 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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