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Carp and Trench

A stew of carp and trench fish cooked with red wine, onion, horseradish, and spices, finished with a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,039 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

Also mentioned in the method: butter

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the carp and trench thoroughly.

  2. Dry them with a cloth.

  3. Strew flour over the fish and fry them in dripping or suet until light brown.

Stew

  1. Place the fish in a stew-pan with water, red wine, lemon pickle, browning sauce, mushroom powder, cayenne pepper, onion, and horseradish.

  2. Cover the pan.

  3. Stew gently over low heat until the gravy reduces to just cover the fish.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the fish and place them on a serving dish.

  2. Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour.

  3. Boil the gravy briefly.

  4. Strain the gravy over the fish.

  5. Squeeze lemon juice into the sauce just before serving.

  6. Garnish with pickled mushrooms.

  7. Garnish with scraped horseradish.

  8. Fry and cut some fish roe into small pieces.

  9. Boil the remaining fish roe.

  10. Garnish with the fish roe.

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. Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + clovetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,144 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Red wine + mushroomtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together720 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Red wine + clovetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together636 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,619 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Coats the fish so it browns and helps thicken the gravy.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy.
Browning sauce
Darkens the gravy and adds a deeper, caramelised flavour.
Lemon pickle
Adds sharp, tangy acidity that balances the rich gravy.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the stewing liquid.
Horseradish
Adds pungent heat and aroma that mellows during stewing.

The step that matters

Stew gently over low heat until the gravy reduces to just cover the fish. High heat can break up the delicate fish and make the gravy cloudy or bitter. A gentle simmer cooks the fish through while the liquid reduces and concentrates its flavour.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, red wine, lemon, sauce, mushroom, pepper, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, red wine, lemon, sauce, mushroom, pepper, clove. 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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