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To Stew Fish

A stew of fish simmered with salt, pepper, butter, flour, parsley, thyme, and optional oysters or eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

To Stew Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Rub the fish with salt and pepper, then place it in a pan.

  2. Add 1 pint of water to the pan.

  3. Cook until the fish is about half done.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with additional salt and pepper, butter, flour, parsley, and thyme.

  2. If using, add oysters or substitute with sliced hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Serve with the gravy in the dish.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and fat to the gravy, giving it a smooth, rounded flavour.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it heats.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper, butter, flour, parsley, oyster, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, butter, flour, parsley, oyster, egg. 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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