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Perch with Wine

A perch stewed with stock, white wine, herbs, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Perch with Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Scald the perch and remove the gills.

  2. Place the perch in a stew-pan with stock, white wine, bay leaf, garlic, parsley, scallions, cloves, and salt.

  3. Cook until done, then remove the fish.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain the cooking liquid and mix the dregs with butter and flour.

  2. Heat the mixture until thickened, adding pepper, nutmeg, and anchovy butter.

  3. Drain the perch and serve with the sauce.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  4. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Perch
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the seasoned liquid.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it body and a rounded, smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the strained cooking liquid into a sauce as it heats.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the cooking liquid, flavouring both fish and sauce.
Anchovy butter
Adds savoury depth and salty richness to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the sauce until thickened. Flour must be heated long enough to cook out its raw starch taste and to thicken the liquid. Heating too briefly leaves the sauce thin and floury, while overheating can make it lumpy or cause the butter to separate.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, clove, parsley, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, clove, parsley, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg. 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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