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Stewed Carp

A stew of carp seasoned with salt, pepper, mace, parsley, onion, marjoram, cream, butter, and optional port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stewed Carp

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the head, tail, and fins of the carp.

  2. Season the carp inside and out with salt, pepper, and powdered mace, then let it sit for 1 hour.

Stew

  1. In a stew pan, combine the carp, parsley, onion, marjoram, cream or milk, and butter.

  2. Add enough water to cover the carp.

  3. Let it stew for 30 minutes.

  4. Add port wine if desired.

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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 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 + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carp
Provides the flesh that becomes tender and flaky as it simmers gently.
Cream or rich milk
Adds fat and richness, giving the cooking liquid a smooth, mellow body.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and the flour rolled into it helps thicken the liquid.

The step that matters

Let it stew for 30 minutes. Gentle simmering cooks the fish through without breaking it apart. Boiling hard toughens the protein and can make the flesh fall apart and turn dry.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, parsley, onion, marjoram, cream, butter, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley, onion, marjoram, cream, butter, flour. 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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