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A Matelote of Fish

A stew of fish cooked with onions, wine, gravy, vegetables, and seasoned with spices, finished with a sauce of onions, mushrooms, oysters, and fish quenelles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 4,432 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat, fish, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the fish and onions

  1. Cut the fish into convenient pieces.

  2. Scald the button onions and peel them.

Make the sauce

  1. Brown the onions in a saucepan with butter.

  2. Add the fish and the red wine, gravy, bay leaves, allspice, pepper, salt, carrot, and turnip.

  3. Remove the cooked fish and keep it warm.

  4. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter.

  5. Add the button onions, mushrooms, scalded oysters, and fish quenelles.

  6. Season the sauce with anchovy, lemon juice, and cayenne.

  7. Bring the sauce to a boil.

Serve

  1. Pour the hot sauce over the fish.

  2. Garnish with crayfish.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Fish + buttertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,432 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Allspice + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,021 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the stew, flavouring the sauce as it cooks.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Gravy
Provides the savoury base that the sauce is built on.
Flour and butter
Thicken the gravy into a smooth, coating sauce.
Button onions
Add sweetness and body once browned in butter.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savour and a meaty texture to the stew.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil. Once flour is added to the gravy, it must be heated enough to cook out its raw starch taste and to thicken properly. Boiling without stirring can scorch the bottom and leave lumps, so keep the sauce moving.

Flavor stand-ins for the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, onion, butter, red wine, pepper, carrot, turnip):

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Celerybetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, onion, butter, red wine, pepper, carrot, turnip. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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