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Fish Stew

A stew of white fish fillets and fish balls simmered in a butter‑onion sauce with lemon, spices, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Fish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish balls

  1. Clean, wash, and dry the fish, then cut it into neat fillets.

  2. Remove the skin and bones from some smaller pieces, then coarsely chop the fish to fill 2 tablespoons.

  3. Mix the chopped fish with bread crumbs, parsley, lemon rind, salt, and pepper.

  4. Bind the mixture with a little beaten egg and shape into small balls.

Cook the fish

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Fry the onion slightly.

  3. Add ginger, mace, cayenne, salt, and pepper to the pan.

  4. Add the filleted fish to the pan.

  5. Barely cover with hot water and bring to a boil.

  6. Place the fish balls on top.

  7. Cover with greased paper and simmer gently for 15 to 20 minutes.

  8. Transfer the fish to a hot dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Strain the cooking liquid over the beaten eggs.

  2. Return the mixture to the pan.

  3. Season to taste.

  4. Add lemon juice.

  5. Stir over low heat until the sauce thickens without boiling.

  6. Pour the sauce over the fish and serve.

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

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

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the fish balls and thicken the sauce when stirred into the cooking liquid.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the fish balls a softer, binding body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour of the onion and spices.
White fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the eggs.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce over low heat without boiling. Egg proteins set and thicken gently at low heat, but if the sauce boils the eggs can curdle and turn grainy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, bread, parsley, lemon, egg, butter, onion):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, bread, parsley, lemon, egg, butter, onion. 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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