Skip to main content
Main

Trout, Stewed

A stew of trout simmered gently in butter, flour, veal stock, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Trout, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Clean, wash, and dry the trout.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  3. Stir in the flour.

  4. Add mace, cayenne, and nutmeg to season.

Stew

  1. Put in the fish and brown them lightly on both sides.

  2. Add the veal stock to the sauce.

  3. Add the parsley, bay leaf, lemon peel, and salt.

  4. Stew the fish very gently for 10 minutes.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Trout
Forms the main body of the dish and cooks through in the gently simmering sauce.
Butter
Carries the flavour and enriches the sauce while the fish browns lightly.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Veal stock
Provides the liquid base that becomes the savoury body of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew the fish very gently for 10 minutes. At a hard simmer the delicate flesh can break apart and toughen as its proteins tighten. A very gentle heat keeps the trout moist and intact while it cooks through.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, nutmeg, veal, parsley, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes