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Tench, Stewed

A stew of tench cooked with butter, vegetables, herbs, lemon, claret, and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Tench, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean, scale, and draw the tench, removing the gills.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, heat the butter or dripping with the mushroom, carrot, onion, turnip, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, lemon rind, and cloves for 6-8 minutes.

  2. Dredge the mixture with flour.

  3. Add stock or water and lemon juice.

  4. Add the tench and bring to a boil.

  5. Stir in claret, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and cayenne.

  6. Reduce heat and let simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the fish.

  2. Keep warm in the oven.

  3. Strain the sauce.

  4. Skim off fat.

  5. Pour over the fish before serving.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Tench
The main fish, which cooks gently in the sauce until tender and flaky.
Butter or good dripping
Provides fat for cooking the vegetables and carries their flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the fat and liquids.
Claret
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce as it simmers.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the fat.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after adding the tench. Once the liquid reaches a boil, lowering the heat to a gentle simmer keeps the delicate fish from breaking apart and toughening while it cooks through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mushroom, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, lemon. 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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