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Fish Matelote

A dish of sautéed fish with onions, mushrooms, stock, wine, and herbs, simmered to a flavorful sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fish Matelote

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the fish and onions

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and fry the fish and onions until golden brown.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan or earthenware cooking pot.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add the mushrooms, flour, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and herbs.

  2. Pour in the stock and red wine, then simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Adjust seasoning if needed 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Mushroom + red winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together720 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

White fish
Forms the main body of the dish, flaking gently into the sauce as it simmers.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce as it simmers.
Butter
Carries the initial frying and adds richness and browning to the fish and onions.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the simmering sauce.
Small white onions
Soften and sweeten during frying and simmering, adding body to the stew.

The step that matters

Frying the fish and onions until golden brown. Browning through the butter creates savoury flavour compounds that carry into the sauce. Pale frying leaves the stew tasting flat, while over-browning the delicate fish can make it dry and bitter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, mushroom, flour, pepper, lemon, red wine. 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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