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Stewed Pish

A fish stew made with gravy, Madeira, Harvey sauce, lemon juice, oyster essence, anchovy, mace, butter, flour, and white fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and haddock match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Stewed Pish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, combine 1 quart of good gravy and ½ pint of Madeira.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon each of Harvey sauce, lemon juice, essence of oysters, and 2 tablespoons of anchovy, along with a little pounded mace.

  3. Thicken the mixture with a bit of butter mixed with flour.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Stew the fish

  1. Add slices of fresh cod, ling, haddock, or any firm white fish and let them stew for 15 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. Sauce + haddocktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Anchovy + haddocktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Good gravy
Forms the savoury liquid base that the fish cooks in.
Madeira
Adds depth and a fortified wine sweetness to the sauce.
Anchovy
Contributes salty, savoury depth that rounds out the sauce.
Butter and flour
Thicken the liquid into a smooth sauce that clings to the fish.
Firm white fish
Provides the main protein, holding its shape through gentle stewing.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce before the fish goes in. Flour mixed with butter must be cooked through and blended smoothly into the hot liquid; lumps or raw flour taste pasty and cloud the sauce, and the sauce should be thick before the delicate fish is added.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, lemon, oyster, anchovy, butter, flour, haddock):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, lemon, oyster, anchovy, butter, flour, haddock. 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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