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Plaice, with Mushrooms

Plaice fillets simmered in a mushroom gravy made with fish stock and browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Plaice, with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim and dry the plaice, then cut it into slices about 1 inch wide.

  2. Make 1 pint of fish stock from the cuttings and strain it into a clean pan.

Make the gravy

  1. Wash and break up the mushrooms, then fry them in the butter for a few minutes.

  2. Add the mushrooms to the stock along with the browned flour.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the fish to the pan, season with salt, and simmer for about 20 minutes.

  2. Serve the fish on a dish and pour the gravy over it.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together444 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 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

Plaice
Forms the main body of the dish and turns flaky and tender when cooked.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavour to the gravy as they cook down.
Butter
Carries the frying of the mushrooms and adds rich flavour and browning.
Fish stock
Forms the liquid base that becomes the gravy and gives the fish savoury flavour.
Browned flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer the fish gently. Keep the stock at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil. Vigorous boiling breaks up the delicate fish slices and makes the flesh tough and ragged, while gentle heat cooks it evenly and keeps it intact.

“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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