Skip to main content
Main

To Stew Fish

A stew of fish simmered in butter, flour, and herbs, served with gravy and sliced hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Stew Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the fish

  1. Season the fish with salt and pepper.

  2. In a pot, add the fish and nearly 1 pint of water.

  3. Cook until the fish is about half done.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Add ½ pound of butter, 2 tablespoons of flour, salt, pepper, thyme, and parsley.

  2. Serve the fish with the gravy and sliced hard-boiled eggs.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 becomes tender as it cooks in the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the gravy a smooth, rounded flavour.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a gravy as it cooks with the butter and water.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a soft, mild texture and richness when sliced over the served fish.

The step that matters

Cook until the fish is about half done. Fish cooks quickly and can turn dry and flaky if overcooked. Stopping at about half done leaves it tender, since it keeps cooking when the gravy is added and the dish is served.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Thymethe original

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

More fish stew recipes

Water Soucy 6White 5with Eggs 4with Fish Balls 4Brown 3Cod 3 See all 52 →

You might also like

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes