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Gravies for Fried Fisii

A gravy made from fried fish, onions, butter, spices, and optional wine, pickled onions, mushrooms, oysters, and extra fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Gravies for Fried Fisii

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the fried fish pieces and place them in a stewpan with water or broth.

  2. Fry the coated onions in the butter until brown, then add to the stewpan.

Make the gravy

  1. Add the small piece of butter or cream, sweet herbs, and seasonings.

  2. Let the mixture stew until it thickens to the consistency of raw cream, reducing the liquid by one-third.

  3. Optionally, add pickled onions, mushrooms, and oysters, including the oyster liquor if using fresh.

  4. For added flavor, include 1-2 glasses of wine.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Browns and sweetens, adding depth and body to the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving the gravy a smooth finish.
Flour
Coats the onions and thickens the liquid as it stews into a gravy.

The step that matters

Stewing until thickened. The gravy must reduce by about one-third to reach the consistency of raw cream. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while over-reducing makes it stiff, so watch it closely as the liquid evaporates.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, sauce, mushroom):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, sauce, mushroom. 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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