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Portuguese Stewed Fish

A stewed fish dish made with onions, tomatoes, fried fish, and a flour-thickened stock seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Portuguese Stewed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the onions and tomatoes until ready.

  2. Place the cold fried fish in the frying pan with the onions and tomatoes.

  3. Add the thickened stock, pepper, and salt.

  4. Heat thoroughly and serve carefully to avoid breaking the fish.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + fishtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hepten-3-one (metal).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 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

Spanish onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, forming the base flavour of the dish.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture that combine with the onions into a sauce.
Cold fried fish
Provides the main protein, which is gently reheated in the sauce.
Stock thickened with flour
Adds body to the liquid, so the sauce clings to the fish and onions.

The step that matters

Heat thoroughly and serve carefully. Fish is delicate and flakes apart when it is stirred or boiled hard. Gentle heating keeps the pieces intact, and flour-thickened sauce can scorch or lump if it is left to boil vigorously.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, fish, flour, pepper. 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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