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Stewed Fish

A stew of conger eel or hake simmered in milk and water with butter, flour, salt, pepper, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Stewed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and wash the fish.

Stew the fish

  1. Place the fish in a stew pan with milk, water, and seasonings.

  2. Cover closely and simmer gently for about 1 hour.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Work the butter into the flour on a plate until it forms a soft ball.

  2. Remove the fish from the stew pan.

  3. Add the butter to the milk.

  4. Let the mixture boil.

  5. Strain the mixture over 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

Conger eel or hake
Is the main protein that becomes tender during slow simmering in liquid.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the stew and, once thickened, the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid when worked with butter and boiled, giving the sauce body.

The step that matters

Let the mixture boil. Flour thickens only when the liquid reaches a boil after the butter-flour ball is added. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and possibly tasting raw, so it should be stirred and brought fully to a boil.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, 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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