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Stewed Carp

A carp stewed in beef gravy with onion, cloves, spices, port, anchovies, mustard, walnut ketchup, and butter‑flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Stewed Carp

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Lay the fish in a stew-pan with beef gravy, onion, cloves, Jamaica pepper, and black pepper.

  2. Add port or cider and simmer covered until nearly done.

  3. Stir in chopped anchovies, mustard, and walnut ketchup.

  4. Add butter rolled in flour, shake, and let the gravy boil for a few minutes.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Carp
Is the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the gravy until it is nearly done.
Rich beef gravy
Forms the liquid base that cooks the fish and carries the other flavours.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the gravy as it boils, giving it a smoother, richer body.
Anchovies
Adds a salty, savoury depth to the gravy as it cooks.
Walnut ketchup
Adds a dark, tangy, savoury note to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the gravy after adding the butter and flour. Flour must be heated for a few minutes to cook out its raw taste and to fully thicken the gravy. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and floury-tasting.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, clove, pepper, cider, mustard, ketchup):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, clove, pepper, cider, mustard, ketchup. 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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