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To Stew Fish

A fish stew made with cullis, shallots, anchovies, bay leaf, horseradish, lemon peel, Port wine, and seasonings, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Stew Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine cullis, shallots, anchovies, bay leaf, horseradish, lemon peel, and Port wine.

  2. Season with Cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, and lemon juice.

  3. Bring to a boil and reduce until thickened, then strain over the fish.

Cook and serve

  1. Stew the fish gently in the sauce.

  2. Serve in a deep dish with the sauce and fried bread around it.

  3. If using carp or tench, mix some hard roe in batter and fry in pieces.

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. Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Shallot + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 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

Cullis
Forms the savoury base of the sauce, giving it body and depth.
Anchovies
Dissolve into the sauce, adding salty, savoury depth without an obvious fishy taste.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and richness, and its acidity balances the sauce.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that mellows as the sauce cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and sharpens the flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Reducing the sauce until thickened. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates flavour and body. Reducing too little leaves the sauce thin; reducing too long makes it salty and overly intense.

“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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