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Skate, Stewed

A stew of skate pieces simmered in a seasoned gravy with chives, parsley, chili vinegar, mushroom ketchup, and Harvey's sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Skate, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Skin and cut the skate into neat pieces.

  2. Fry the pieces in hot fat until nicely browned.

  3. Drain the fried pieces and set aside.

Make the gravy

  1. In a saucepan, combine the head, skin, trimmings, water, onion, pepper, and salt. Simmer gently until the gravy is strong.

  2. Strain the gravy back into the saucepan.

  3. Thicken the gravy with brown thickening.

Finish and serve

  1. Add chives or onion, parsley, chili vinegar, mushroom ketchup, and Harvey's sauce. Boil the sauce until thick enough to coat the spoon.

  2. Heat the fish in the sauce. 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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Chive + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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, cooking into tender flakes in the sauce.
Brown thickening
Thickens the gravy so it clings to the fish and coats the spoon.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the gravy as it simmers.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury depth to the sauce.
Chili vinegar
Adds sharpness that brightens the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce until thick enough to coat the spoon. Reducing the gravy concentrates flavour and lets the thickener set properly. Under-reduced sauce stays thin and runs off the fish, while over-boiling can make it gluey or too salty.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, chive, parsley, vinegar, mushroom, ketchup, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, chive, parsley, vinegar, mushroom, ketchup, sauce. 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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