Skip to main content
Main

Baked Carp with Spanish Sauce

A baked carp served with a Spanish sauce and potatoes à la Royale.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Baked Carp with Spanish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare a Spanish sauce by following the instructions on page 71, adding 2 teaspoons of sugar and using good stock instead of water to boil the vegetables.

  2. Dress the carp for baking, placing it in a dripping pan on a few vegetable scraps.

  3. Season the carp with 1 teaspoon of salt and ½ teaspoon of pepper, then pour ½ cup of stock or gravy over it.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the carp for 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Strain some Spanish sauce onto a dish.

  3. Place the fish in the sauce carefully.

  4. Arrange the potatoes a la Royale around the fish.

  5. Garnish with parsley and serve with additional sauce in a sauce boat.

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

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + potatotop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

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

Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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

Carp
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked through by baking in liquid.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness to the Spanish sauce, balancing its savory flavor.
Stock
Provides savory flavor and moisture for the sauce and the fish.

The step that matters

Baking the carp. Fish is delicate and overcooks quickly, becoming dry and firm. Baking it gently in stock and watching the time keeps the flesh moist and flaky.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pepper, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes