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Strong Fish Gravy

A thickened fish broth made with eels or flounders or catfish, toasted bread, mace, pepper, herbs, lemon peel, anchovies, horseradish, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Strong Fish Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Skin and gut the fish, then cut into small pieces.

Simmer the gravy

  1. Place the fish in a saucepan and cover with water.

  2. Add the toasted bread, mace, whole pepper, sweet herbs, lemon peel, anchovies, and horseradish.

  3. Cover and simmer until cooked through.

  4. Add a bit of butter and flour to thicken, then boil briefly.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Lemon + horseradishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels or flounders or catfish
Forms the main body of the gravy and provides the flavor base.
Toasted brown bread
Adds body and helps thicken the liquid as it cooks.
Anchovies
Contributes savory depth that rounds out the fish flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and smooths the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a gravy when cooked briefly with butter.

The step that matters

Thickening with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked briefly with fat and liquid so starch swells and thickens smoothly; boiling afterward sets the texture and cooks out raw flour taste.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (catfish, bread, pepper, lemon, horseradish, butter, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against catfish, bread, pepper, lemon, horseradish, butter, 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.

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