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Fish Stew

A fish stew made with fish, onion, sweet oil, egg yolks, flour, lemon juice, ginger, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Fish Stew

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Place the cleaned fish in a fish kettle and cover with water.

  2. Bring to a boil.

Make the onion and egg mixture

  1. In a pan, fry the chopped onion in sweet oil until soft.

  2. Add the fried onion to the kettle with the fish.

  3. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with sifted flour and strained lemon juice.

Finish and serve

  1. Once the fish is cooked, pour the egg mixture into the kettle and add ginger, pepper, and salt.

  2. Stew for an additional 2-3 minutes.

  3. Transfer to a hot dish.

  4. Garnish with toast sippets and serve hot.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the broth into a smooth, creamy sauce when gently heated.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the stew and balances the rich yolks.
Sifted flour
Stabilises the egg mixture so it thickens without curdling.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth once softened in oil.
Sweet oil
Carries the onion's flavour and softens it evenly before it joins the stew.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture. Egg yolks curdle if the liquid is boiling hard when they go in. Add the mixture to the kettle once the fish is cooked, and keep the stew at a gentle heat while stirring so it thickens smoothly rather than scrambling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, egg, flour, lemon, ginger, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, flour, lemon, ginger, 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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