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Stewed Fish

A simple fish stew made with milk, flour, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and poach

  1. Wash the fish and cut it into nice-sized pieces.

  2. Heat the milk in a pot until hot, then add the fish.

  3. Simmer gently until the fish is cooked through.

  4. Remove the fish to a warm dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Blend the flour with a little cold milk, then add it to the pot to thicken the milk.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add the butter, parsley, lemon juice, and seasoning.

  3. Pour the sauce over the fish and serve.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce when blended with cold milk first.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and gently cooks the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Blend the flour with cold milk before adding it to the pot. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps as its starch grains swell unevenly. Mixing it into cold milk first disperses the starch so the sauce thickens smoothly.

“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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