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Stewed Fish

A simple fish stew with onion, lemon, herbs, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Stewed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle salt on the fish pieces.

  2. In a pot, boil ½ cup water with the sliced onion until cooked, then discard the water.

Cook the fish

  1. Add 1 cup water, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and herbs to the pot.

  2. Boil the fish in this mixture until done, about 20 minutes.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a small bowl, rub together the butter and flour to a cream.

  2. Thicken the gravy with the butter‑flour mixture and serve hot.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it simmers in the liquid.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory flavor to the cooking water.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the stewed fish.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy when cooked with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and combines with flour to form a smooth thickening paste.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with the butter‑flour mixture. Flour must be fully blended into the butter before being stirred into hot liquid; otherwise it clumps. Once added, the gravy should be kept at a simmer so the starch swells and thickens evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, lemon, pepper, parsley, 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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