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Stewed Trout

A stew of trout cooked in butter, flour, veal stock, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Trout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Melt the butter in a broad stewpan or well-tinned iron saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour and seasonings.

  3. Clean and dry the trout.

Stew

  1. Add the trout to the pan and brown lightly on both sides.

  2. Pour in the veal stock.

  3. Add the parsley, bay leaf, lemon peel, and salt.

  4. Stew gently for 30 to 45 minutes, or longer if the fish is particularly large.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the trout.

  2. Skim the fat from the gravy.

  3. Strain the gravy over the fish.

  4. Serve immediately.

  5. Optionally, add a little acid or a glass of wine to the sauce.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Trout
The main fish, which is browned and then gently stewed until cooked through.
Butter
Provides fat for browning the fish and carries the flavour of the gravy.
Flour
Stirred into the butter to thicken the gravy as it stews.
Veal stock
Forms the liquid base of the gravy in which the fish stews.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 30 to 45 minutes. Gentle heat keeps the liquid just below a boil so the fish cooks evenly and stays moist and intact. Boiling would toughen the flesh and break it apart. Larger fish need the longer time.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, nutmeg, veal, parsley, lemon):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, nutmeg, veal, parsley, lemon. 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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