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Fish Stew

A stew made with fish, salt pork, onion, flour, and water, simmered slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,214 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the head, tail, and skin from the fish.

  2. Separate the flesh from the bones with a sharp knife.

Make the broth

  1. Place the head, tail, and bones in a pot with 1 quart of cold water and bring to a boil.

  2. Simmer the broth for 20 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. Slice the pork and onion thinly.

  2. Fry the pork slowly until light brown.

  3. Add the onion and cook until light straw color.

  4. Stir in the flour and cook for 3 minutes.

  5. Strain the mixture into the water from the boiled bones.

  6. Boil for 5 minutes.

  7. Season with salt and pepper.

Finish the stew

  1. Cut the fish into pieces and add to the saucepan with the gravy.

  2. Cover and simmer very slowly for 30 minutes.

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. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Provides the main body of the stew and flavors the broth as it simmers.
Salt pork
Fat rendered during frying adds richness and savory flavor to the gravy.
Onion
Cooked to light straw color, it adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the gravy.
Flour
Cooked with the fat and onion, it thickens the strained liquid into a gravy.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour into the gravy. Flour must cook for a few minutes with the fat and onion before liquid is added, or the gravy will taste raw and thicken unevenly. Stirring keeps it from clumping.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pork, flour, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pork, flour, 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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