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Trout Stewed

A trout stew cooked with butter, flour, nutmeg, mace, cayenne, veal gravy, salt, parsley, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Trout Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and clean the trout, then wipe it dry.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter, dredging it in flour as it melts.

  2. Add grated nutmeg, mace, and cayenne, and stir well until mixed.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the trout and allow it to brown slightly.

  2. Cover the fish with veal gravy.

  3. Add salt, parsley, and lemon peel.

  4. Stew slowly for 40 minutes.

  5. Remove the fish, strain the gravy, and pour it over the trout.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Trout (in the method)
Is the main protein, cooked gently in the gravy until it flakes and takes on flavour.
Butter
Carries the spices and gives the flour a base for thickening the gravy with richness.
Flour
Thickens the butter and veal gravy into a smooth, lightly body-rich sauce.
Veal gravy
Provides the liquid and savory meaty base that the fish stews in.

The step that matters

Stew slowly for 40 minutes. Gentle, low heat keeps the fish tender and intact, while a rapid boil can break the trout apart and toughen its proteins.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, nutmeg, veal, parsley, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, nutmeg, veal, parsley, lemon. 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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