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Another Way to Stew Fish

A fish stew featuring sliced onions and fish balls made from fish, bread, and herbs, finished with lemon juice and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Another Way to Stew Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Boil the onions in water until tender, then strain and slice them.

Cook the stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine the fish slices, water, salt, pepper, ginger, and mace; bring to a boil for 15 minutes.

  2. Add the sliced onions and forcemeat balls made from the chopped fish mixture and beaten eggs; drop them into the boiling fish.

  3. Cover and cook for 10 minutes, then remove from heat.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the juice of the lemons and chopped parsley; simmer gently while stirring until just boiling, then remove from heat quickly to prevent the sauce from breaking.

  2. Optionally, add a little butter or sweet oil to the balls for extra flavor.

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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + marjoramtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 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

Eggs
Bind the forcemeat balls and help them hold their shape while cooking.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the broth and balances the fish.
Onions
Add sweetness and body as they soften and blend into the stew.
Fish
Provides the main protein and savory flavor of the stew and the forcemeat.
Grated bread
Adds bulk and softness to the forcemeat balls, keeping them tender.

The step that matters

Finishing with lemon juice. Once the lemon juice and parsley go in, the sauce can curdle if it is kept simmering or boiled hard. Heating gently only until just boiling, then removing it from the heat quickly, keeps the egg-thickened sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, ginger, fish, bread, parsley, marjoram):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, ginger, fish, bread, parsley, marjoram. 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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