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Fish Stock

A stock made by simmering eels, river fish, skate, onion, anchovy, salt, and water, enriched with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 637 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Fish Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the eels well, leaving the skin on, and cut them into pieces.

  2. Add the eels, river fish, and skate to a pot and cover with water.

Simmer and finish

  1. Stew gently for four hours.

  2. Add the onion, anchovy, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Strain the stock and enrich with butter to taste.

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. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + anchovytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Give the stock its rich body and deep, savory flavor as they break down.
River fish
Add body and flavor to the stock as they simmer and release their juices.
Skate
Contributes gelatin and body, giving the stock a fuller mouthfeel.
Anchovy
Adds savory depth and umami to the stock.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounder, smoother mouthfeel to the finished stock.

The step that matters

Stew gently for four hours. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer extracts flavor and gelatin without clouding the stock. A hard boil emulsifies fat and breaks up the fish, leaving a murky, harsher stock.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, onion, anchovy, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, onion, anchovy, butter. 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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