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Brown Sauces

A brown fish stock made with carrots, onions, butter, fish bones, wine, Madeira, herbs, mushrooms, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Brown Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the carrots and onions in butter until the butter is clear.

  2. Add the fish bones and moisten with the dry white wine and Madeira.

  3. Include the herbs, soaked dried mushrooms, and cloves.

  4. Finish the stock as prescribed for White Fish Stock.

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. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften and caramelise in the butter.
Onions
Build savoury sweetness and colour as they soften and brown in the butter.
Fish bones
Provide the core gelatinous body and fish flavour of the stock.
Dry white wine
Adds acidity and lifts the aroma while helping extract flavour from the bones.
Madeira
Adds fortified sweetness and deeper, toasty aroma to the stock.
Dried mushrooms
Contribute concentrated savoury umami flavour to the stock.

The step that matters

Frying the carrots and onions until the butter is clear. Cooking the vegetables gently in butter softens them and coaxes out sugars for browning, which gives the stock its colour and depth. Stopping too early leaves a pale, flat flavour, while overcooking can scorch the butter and make the stock bitter.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, butter, fish, salmon, white wine, mushroom):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, butter, fish, salmon, white wine, mushroom. 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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