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Carp, with Wine

A carp stuffed with butter, parsley, leeks, shallots, salt, and spice, baked and served with a wine and broth sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and shallot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Carp, with Wine

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the carp

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Mix butter, parsley, leeks, shallots, salt, and spice together.

  3. Stuff the mixture inside the carp and secure it.

Poach and finish

  1. In a pot, combine wine, broth, onion, thyme, bay leaf, cloves, and lemon slices.

  2. Bring to a boil over high heat.

  3. Add the carp and cook until well done.

  4. Remove the carp from the pot and place it on a plate.

  5. Remove the fastenings and strain the sauce through a sieve.

  6. Boil the sauce down and pour it over the carp.

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. Leek + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Leek + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Carp
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the poaching liquid until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing, carrying flavour into the fish as it cooks.
White wine
Forms the acidic poaching liquid that flavours the fish and, reduced, the finished sauce.
Broth
Adds savoury depth to the poaching liquid, which becomes the base of the sauce.
Shallots
Contribute a mild, sweet onion aroma to the stuffing and the poaching liquid.
Leeks
Add a mild, sweet onion-like flavour to the stuffing as they soften during cooking.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce down. Reducing the strained poaching liquid concentrates its flavour and thickens it slightly by evaporating water. Boiling too briefly leaves a thin, weak sauce, while over-reducing can make it overly salty and sticky.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, leek, shallot, white wine, thyme, clove):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, leek, shallot, white wine, thyme, clove. 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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