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Tench White

A dish of tench fish cooked in a white sauce of butter, flour, wine, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Tench White

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fish

  1. Cut the fish in half and, if large, cut each half into two pieces.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan, add the fish, and dust with flour.

  3. Pour in boiling water, add mushrooms, and season with salt, pepper, sweet herbs, and the onion.

  4. When it boils, pour in the hot white wine and let it stew until reduced.

  5. Remove the fish, strain the liquid, and save the mushrooms.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with verjuice, parsley, and nutmeg.

  2. Stir this mixture into the strained liquid while it boils until thickened.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish and serve garnished with lemon.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

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

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 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

Tench fish
The main ingredient, gently stewed in the cooking liquid so it stays moist and tender.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and enriches the base of the dish.
Flour
Starch that thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce as it heats.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stewing liquid, deepening the flavour of the sauce.
Egg yolks
Set with gentle heat to thicken the sauce and add richness.
Verjuice
Adds a sharp, fruity acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the boiling liquid. Egg yolk proteins thicken the sauce by setting with heat, but if they get too hot they curdle and turn grainy. Adding them to a boiling liquid risks scrambling, so the heat must be controlled while the sauce thickens.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, flour, mushroom, pepper, onion, white wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour, mushroom, pepper, onion, white wine. 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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