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Another Way to Stew Fish

A fish stew featuring fish slices and fish forcemeat balls simmered with onions, herbs, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Another Way to Stew Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Boil the onions in water until tender.

  2. Strain and slice the onions.

Make the stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine the fish slices, water, salt, pepper, ginger, and mace.

  2. Bring to a boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Add the sliced onions and forcemeat balls made from chopped fish, grated bread, chopped onion, parsley, marjoram, mace, pepper, ginger, and 5 beaten eggs.

  4. Drop the balls into the boiling fish mixture.

  5. Cover and cook for 10 minutes.

Finish the sauce

  1. Remove from heat.

  2. Stir in 6 eggs and the juice of 5 lemons slowly.

  3. Simmer gently, stirring until just boiling.

  4. Remove quickly to prevent the sauce from breaking.

  5. Optionally add a little butter or sweet oil to the balls for extra flavor.

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. Ginger + marjoramtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Softens into the stew and adds sweetness and body to the broth.
Eggs
Bind the forcemeat balls and thicken the lemon sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Fish
Provides the main flavor and protein of the stew, both as slices and as forcemeat.
Grated bread
Adds bulk and softness to the forcemeat balls, helping them hold together.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the stew and helps thicken the egg sauce.

The step that matters

Remove quickly to prevent the sauce from breaking. Egg proteins set and curdle when overheated, so once the eggs and lemon are stirred in the pot must only simmer gently until just boiling. Holding it at a hard boil makes the sauce grainy and separated.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, ginger, fish, bread, parsley, marjoram):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, ginger, fish, bread, parsley, marjoram. 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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