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Skate

A fish dish of skate simmered in stock with onion, bouquet garni, butter, flour, lemon juice, and white wine, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,039 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Wash the skate and cut it into serving pieces.

  2. Put the trimmings in a pan with water, bring to a boil, and skim.

  3. Add the sliced onion and bouquet garni, then simmer for 30 minutes and strain.

Make the sauce and cook the skate

  1. In a separate pan, heat the butter and stir in the flour until browned.

  2. Add the strained stock, lemon juice, white wine, and skate pieces.

  3. Season to taste and simmer for 15 minutes or until cooked.

Serve

  1. Dish up the skate and strain the reduced stock over it.

  2. Garnish with croutons and serve hot.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,145 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + white winetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Lemon + white winetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,764 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Onion + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Skate
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender as it simmers gently in the stock.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the sauce and, with flour, forms the base for thickening.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce when cooked in butter until browned.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the reduced stock.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth to the stock as it simmers.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour. Cooking the roux until browned gives the sauce its colour and nutty flavour, but it can scorch quickly, and scorched flour tastes bitter. Stir constantly and watch closely.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, lemon, white wine, pepper, bread):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  3. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, lemon, white wine, pepper, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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