Skip to main content
Main

To Stew Carp and Tench

A stew of carp and tench simmered in gravy, lemon pickle, browning, mushroom catchup, mushroom powder, cayenne, onions, sweet herbs, and red wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

To Stew Carp and Tench

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Stick the tench under the head to bleed freely.

  2. Gut, scale, and wash the fish.

  3. Dry the fish and flour it.

  4. Heat a panful of dripping or rendered suet and fry the fish until light brown.

  5. Drain the fish.

Make the stew

  1. Combine the gravy, lemon pickle, browning, mushroom catchup, mushroom powder, cayenne, onions, and sweet herbs in a stew pan.

  2. Reduce the gravy until it just covers the fish.

  3. Add the red wine.

  4. Remove the fish and place them on a serving dish.

  5. Skim the gravy, remove the herbs, and thicken the gravy with flour and butter.

  6. Boil the gravy and strain it over the fish.

Serve

  1. Garnish with pickled mushrooms and horseradish.

  2. Serve.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Clove + red winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Mushroom + red winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together720 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Tench
Firm white flesh that holds its shape during frying and long simmering.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base, carrying flavour and body for the whole stew.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth, rounding out the richness of the gravy.
Flour
Coats the fish for browning and thickens the finished gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and helps thicken the gravy with flour for a smooth texture.
Mushroom catchup
Contributes concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Frying the floured fish until light brown. Flour browns through the Maillard reaction, adding colour and savoury flavour. Frying in hot fat until light brown seals the coating and helps the fish keep its shape. Overcooking dries the flesh.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, mushroom, pepper, clove, red wine, flour, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, mushroom, pepper, clove, red wine, flour, butter. 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 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes