Skip to main content
Main

To Stew Fish White

A stew of white fish, onions, parsley root, and fish balls, finished with a lemon‑egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Stew Fish White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the chopped onions and parsley root in 1 pint of water.

  2. Cut the fish into pieces and remove the bones from some pieces, then chop them finely.

  3. Mix the chopped fish with melts or kows (fish offal), breadcrumbs, ginger, beaten egg, leeks, and green parsley.

  4. Form the mixture into small balls.

Cook and serve

  1. Layer the fish and onions in a saucepan, sprinkling with ginger.

  2. Pour cold water over the fish to cover it and boil until cooked.

  3. Arrange the cooked fish on a serving dish.

  4. For the sauce, mix lemon juice, beaten egg yolk, and flour with ½ pint of the cooking water.

  5. Add the fish balls to the sauce and boil quickly.

  6. Pour the sauce and balls over the fish 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  3. Parsley + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together759 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  5. Leek + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together162 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

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish and, when minced, the fish balls.
Egg yolk
Thickens the lemon sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture in the fish mixture, helping the balls hold their shape.
Flour
Stabilises the sauce, helping it thicken and resist separating.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the egg.

The step that matters

Adding the fish balls to the sauce and boiling quickly. Egg yolk in the sauce can curdle if it boils hard or for too long. A brisk boil is needed to cook the balls and thicken the flour, but the sauce must be kept moving and watched closely so it stays smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, parsley, ginger, egg, leek, lemon, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, parsley, ginger, egg, leek, lemon, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipes