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To Make a Strong Fish Gravy

A fish gravy made by simmering fish with spices, then thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Make a Strong Fish Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Skin, scale, gut, and wash the fish, then cut into small pieces.

  2. Place the fish in a saucepan and cover with water.

Make the stock

  1. Add the toasted bread, mace, whole peppercorns, sweet herbs, and lemon peel.

  2. Boil until the mixture is rich and flavorful.

Make the gravy

  1. Melt the butter in a separate saucepan.

  2. Add flour to the melted butter and stir until browned.

  3. Strain the fish gravy into the butter mixture and boil for a few 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eels or fish
Provides the main flavor and body of the gravy as it simmers in the water.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness and a rounded flavor to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy and, when browned, adds a nutty, toasted flavor.
Toasted bread
Adds body and a toasted aroma to the stock.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour until browned. Flour cooked in fat must be stirred constantly so it browns evenly without scorching, which gives color and flavor. Scorched flour turns bitter and can ruin the gravy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, bread, lemon, butter, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, bread, lemon, butter, flour. 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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