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Sour Stew

A fish stew simmered with butter, onion, lemon juice, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and fish are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sour Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and sauté the sliced onion until softened.

  2. Add the fish and enough boiling water to cover it.

Finish with the egg mixture

  1. Whisk together the eggs, lemon juice, and flour in a bowl.

  2. Stir the egg mixture into the stew once it has cooled slightly.

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. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

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

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Fish
Forms the main body of the stew and cooks through in the broth.
Eggs
Thicken the broth and add richness when gently heated.
Lemons
Add bright acidity that balances the richness of the eggs and butter.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens in the butter.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor for sautéing the onion.
Flour
Stabilizes the egg mixture so it thickens the stew more evenly.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg mixture. Eggs set and curdle when they get too hot, which would leave the stew grainy instead of smooth. Adding the mixture only after the stew has cooled slightly helps it thicken silkily.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, fish, egg, lemon, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, fish, egg, lemon, flour. 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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