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To Stew Fish

A fish stew made with butter, flour, spices, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

To Stew Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the fish.

  2. Soak the fish in vinegar to remove slime and scales.

  3. Heat butter in a frying pan.

  4. Cook the fish for 6 minutes.

  5. Transfer the fish to a kettle for stewing.

Make the gravy

  1. Sprinkle flour into the frying pan.

  2. Cook the flour for 3 minutes.

  3. Pour the flour over the fish.

  4. Add 1 pound of butter rolled in flour, mace, cloves, cinnamon, red pepper, and salt.

  5. Add enough water to prevent burning.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew over low heat.

  2. When half done, add 1 pint of port wine.

  3. Serve the fish with gravy.

  4. Garnish with lemon or horseradish.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Is the main protein that is cooked and stewed until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browns lightly when heated in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks, giving it body.
Port wine
Adds depth, sweetness and aroma to the stewing liquid.
Vinegar
Acidity helps loosen slime and scales from the fish before cooking.

The step that matters

Adding the water. Enough water must be added to the pan to prevent the butter and flour from scorching, since the stew cooks over low heat and the thickened mixture can burn easily.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, vinegar, butter, flour, clove, cinnamon, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, vinegar, butter, flour, clove, cinnamon, pepper. 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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