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To Stew Fish White

A stew of white fish pieces, onions, parsley root, and fish balls served with a lemon‑egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

To Stew Fish White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the chopped onions and parsley root in 1 pint of water.

  2. Cut the fish into pieces and remove the bones.

  3. Mix the chopped fish, melts or kows, breadcrumbs, ginger, beaten egg, leeks, and parsley.

  4. Form the mixture into small balls.

Cook the fish

  1. Layer the fish and onions in a stewpan, sprinkling with ginger.

  2. Pour cold water over the fish to cover it and boil until cooked.

  3. Arrange the cooked fish on a serving dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, mix the lemon juice, beaten egg yolk, and flour with ½ pint of the cooking water.

  2. Add the small balls to the sauce and boil quickly.

  3. Pour the sauce and balls over the fish before serving.

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. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  3. Parsley + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together759 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  5. Leek + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together162 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Provides the main protein, which firms and flakes as it cooks.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and help the fish mixture hold together in balls.
Egg
Binds the fish mixture so the balls keep their shape when cooked.
Egg yolk
Sets with heat and helps thicken the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the cooking liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the small balls to the sauce and boil quickly.. The egg yolk thickens the sauce as it heats, but it can curdle or turn grainy if it boils too hard, so the sauce needs careful heat control.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, parsley, ginger, egg, leek, lemon, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, parsley, ginger, egg, leek, lemon, 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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