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To Make a Strong Fish Gravy

A thickened fish gravy made from eels, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Make a Strong Fish Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Skin, gut, and wash the eels to remove grit, then cut them into small pieces.

  2. Place the eel pieces in a saucepan and cover with water.

Make the stock

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

  2. Boil the mixture until it becomes rich.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a separate saucepan, melt the butter, then add a little flour and cook until brown.

  2. Strain the fish gravy into the butter mixture and let it simmer 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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
Provide the main flesh and body of the gravy, releasing rich flavour and gelatin as they boil.
Butter
Carries flavour and adds richness to the roux base.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when cooked in butter to form a roux.
Toasted bread
Adds toasted, savoury depth and body to the stock.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in butter until brown. Cooking flour in butter forms a roux that thickens the gravy. Browning it deepens the flavour, but overheating can scorch the flour and leave a bitter taste, so it needs steady attention.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, 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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