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Flounders, Water Souchet

Flounders stewed in water with horseradish, pepper, salt, sugar, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Flounders, Water Souchet

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut each flounder in half.

Cook

  1. In a sauté pan, combine water, horseradish, pepper, salt, sugar, and parsley; bring to a boil.

  2. Add the flounders and stew for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the flounders and place them in a dish without a napkin.

  4. Reduce the cooking liquid slightly, then pour it over the flounders 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Horseradish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Horseradish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Horseradish + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,314 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

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

Pepper and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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

Flounder
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently to a tender, flaky texture in the liquid.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma that flavours the cooking liquid.
Parsley
Contributes a fresh, herbal aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Bring the liquid to a boil before adding the flounder. Adding the fish to liquid that is already simmering or boiling helps the flesh set quickly and stay tender, while the gentle stew finishes the cooking without toughening it.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, sugar, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar, parsley. 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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