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Fish for Stewing. Carp and Tench

A stew of carp or tench cooked with wine, lemon pickle, and spices, finished with a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Fish for Stewing. Carp and Tench

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Scale, gut, and wash the fish thoroughly.

  2. Dry them with a cloth and sprinkle with flour.

Fry and stew

  1. Fry the fish in dripping or lard until light brown.

  2. Place the fish in a stewpan with water, red wine, lemon pickle, browning, mushroom powder, cayenne pepper, onion, and horseradish.

  3. Cover the pan and stew gently over low heat until the gravy reduces to just cover the fish.

Thicken and serve

  1. Remove the fish and place them in a dish.

  2. Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour, boil briefly, and strain over the fish.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Red wine + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Carp or tench
Forms the main body of the stew, becoming tender as it gently simmers in the gravy.
Flour
Coats the fish for browning and later thickens the gravy with butter.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth to the liquid, flavouring the gravy as it reduces.
Butter
Rolled in flour, it enriches and thickens the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Stew gently over low heat until the gravy reduces. Low, gentle heat keeps the delicate fish flesh from breaking apart while the liquid reduces and concentrates into a flavourful gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, red wine, lemon, mushroom, pepper, clove, horseradish):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, red wine, lemon, mushroom, pepper, clove, horseradish. 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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