Skip to main content
Main

Brown Stewed Fish

A stewed fish dish flavored with treacle, gingerbread, brown vinegar, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,226 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Brown Stewed Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and slice the onions, then cook them with the cold water in a stewpan until fully cooked.

Cook the fish

  1. Add the fish and seasoning, allowing the fish to partly cook.

  2. Melt the gingerbread with the brown vinegar in a bowl and mix in the treacle.

  3. Pour this mixture over the fish and let everything cook thoroughly.

  4. Serve cold, shaking the saucepan after adding the sauce to prevent the treacle from burning.

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. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Fish + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,924 recipes

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

  3. Fish + vinegartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,036 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it cooks in the sauce.
Treacle
Adds sweetness and a dark colour, and can scorch if left still.
Gingerbread
Melts into the sauce, adding spice and body to the dish.
Brown vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the treacle and gingerbread.
Onions
Soften into the cooking liquid, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Shaking the saucepan after adding the sauce. Treacle is high in sugar and can scorch on the base of the pan as it heats. Shaking the pan keeps the sauce moving and spreads it evenly, reducing the risk of burnt sugar flavour and sticking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, vinegar):

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, vinegar. 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

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes