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Marseilles Fish-stew

A hearty fish stew from Marseille made with assorted fish, onions, herbs, tomatoes, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Marseilles Fish-stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. Scale, clean, and wash the fish, then cut them into pieces.

  2. In a stewpan, heat oil and add the sliced onions; simmer without browning.

  3. Add the fish, herbs, cloves, peppercorns, coarse sea salt, garlic, and tomatoes, layering them.

  4. Moisten with more oil and fill the stewpan with water, ensuring enough liquid for the stew.

  5. Cover and boil for one hour, tasting the broth and adjusting seasoning as needed.

Serve

  1. Once cooked, garnish the bottom of a soup dish with slices of bread, pour some broth over it, and arrange the fish on top.

  2. Add more slices of bread over the fish and pour the remaining broth on top before serving.

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 + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 and flavor of the stew as it breaks down into the broth.
Onions
Softened slowly in oil without browning, they add sweetness and a mellow base to the broth.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, giving the broth its color and savory depth.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma that mellows and deepens during the long simmer.
Bread
Soaks up the broth when layered in the dish, adding body and texture to the serving.

The step that matters

Simmer the onions without browning. Browned onions turn bitter and darken the broth, while gently softened onions release sweetness and build a mild, clean base for the stew.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, onion, garlic, tomato, bread):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, onion, garlic, tomato, bread. 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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