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Stewed Tench

A stew of tench with onions, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, cloves, mace, sherry, and water.

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 ↓

Stewed Tench

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the tench

  1. In a stewpan, combine the onions, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, cloves, mace, salt, pepper, and sherry.

  2. Lay the tench on top (use 4 whole fish or cut them into 2-3 pieces each).

  3. Add the water, cover, and stew gently over low heat for about 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Remove the fish, drain on a cloth, and serve on a dish without a napkin.

  2. Pour over a sauce made as directed for sauce matelote, cream sauce, or Beyrout.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Tench (in the method)
Is the main fish, cooked gently in the liquid until tender and flaky.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth to the stewing liquid as they soften.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic flavor to the stewing liquid.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, clove, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, clove, pepper. 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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