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Carp or Tench

A fish dish of carp or tench served with a sauce of beer, wine, spices, roe, ketchup, and butter, with roe cakes and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,557 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the fish and beer

  1. Wash the carp or tench and the roes in a pint of stale beer.

  2. Reserve the blood.

  3. Boil the fish in salted water until cooked.

  4. Strain the beer.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the strained beer with red wine, mace, whole pepper, onion with cloves, bruised nutmeg, sweet herbs, lemon peel, anchovy, and horseradish in a saucepan.

  2. Cover and let it boil gently for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the liquid.

  4. Add half of the hard roe, ketchup, butter, and mushroom pickle to the strained liquid.

  5. Boil and stir until the sauce thickens.

Make the roe cakes and serve

  1. Beat the remaining roe with the egg yolk, nutmeg, and small lemon peel.

  2. Fry the mixture in fresh butter to make little cakes.

  3. Fry the bread triangles until brown.

  4. Pour the sauce over the cooked carp.

  5. Arrange the roe cakes and fried bread around the dish.

  6. Garnish with scraped horseradish and parsley.

  7. Place sliced lemon around the edge of the dish.

  8. Serve hot.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Mace + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mace + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

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

  5. Beer + red winetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together31 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard roe
Thickens the sauce and gives the roe cakes a rich, savoury body.
Egg yolk
Binds the beaten roe mixture so it holds together as little cakes.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and browns the roe cakes and bread when fried.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and tang to the sauce.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth to the sauce as it simmers.
Stale beer
Poaches the fish and contributes malty, bitter flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil and stir until the sauce thickens. Stirring while it boils keeps the sauce smooth and evenly heated, and the roe and butter can separate or scorch if it is left unattended.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beer, red wine, mace, pepper, clove, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  3. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beer, red wine, mace, pepper, clove, nutmeg, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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