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Strong Fish Gravy

A thick gravy made from eels or flounders simmered with herbs, spices, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Strong Fish Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Skin and gut the eels or flounders, then wash them clean.

  2. Cut the fish into small pieces and place them in a saucepan.

Make the gravy

  1. Cover the fish with water and add the toasted bread, mace, whole pepper, sweet herbs, lemon peel, anchovies, and horseradish.

  2. Cover the saucepan and simmer the mixture.

  3. Add butter and flour, then boil everything together.

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. Lemon + horseradishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels or flounders
Provide the fish flesh that cooks down to flavour the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the gravy a smoother body.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a gravy as it cooks with the butter.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth to the fish stock.
Toasted bread
Adds body and helps thicken the broth as it breaks down.

The step that matters

Add butter and flour, then boil everything together. Flour needs to be cooked with the hot liquid and fat so it dissolves smoothly and thickens without lumps or a raw starchy taste. Boiling long enough lets the starch swell fully and the gravy set to the right consistency.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, lemon, horseradish, 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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