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Tench, Stewed, with Poulette Sauce

A stewed tench served with a sauce made from butter, flour, wine or cider, herbs, onion, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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, with Poulette Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Draw and clean the tench, removing the gills.

  2. Put the fish into boiling water for 3 minutes.

  3. Remove the scales.

  4. Cut the fish into convenient-sized pieces.

Make the sauce and stew

  1. In a saucepan, mix the butter and flour over medium heat until smooth.

  2. Add enough French wine or cider to cover the fish.

  3. Let it boil for 8-10 minutes.

  4. Add the parsley, thyme, bay leaf, onion, pepper, and salt to the pot.

  5. Add the fish.

  6. Let it stew gently over low heat until cooked, about 20 minutes.

Finish the sauce and serve

  1. Strain the sauce.

  2. Mix part of it with the beaten yolks in a bowl.

  3. Pour this mixture back into the remaining sauce.

  4. Stir over low heat until hot but not boiling.

  5. Add the chopped parsley to the sauce.

  6. Arrange the tench slices on a hot dish.

  7. Pour the sauce over them.

  8. 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 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tench
Is the main fish that is cooked and served in the stewing liquid.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and rich flavour as it melts into the liquid.
Flour
Thickens the butter and wine or cider into a smooth base for the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce when gently heated, giving it a silky texture.
French wine or cider
Provides the cooking liquid that stews the fish and gives the sauce acidity and flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the sauce over low heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the sauce gets too hot or boils, the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, wine, parsley, thyme, pepper, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, wine, parsley, thyme, pepper, egg. 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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