Why it works: Red wine and crayfish work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and 13 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: milk, wheat, fish, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
Prepare and cook the fish
Cut the fish into convenient-sized pieces.
Scald the button onions, peel them, and brown in a stewpan with butter.
Add the fish, starting with the larger pieces.
Pour in the red wine and gravy.
Season with bay leaves, allspice, pepper, salt, carrot, and turnip.
Once the fish is cooked, carefully remove it and keep it warm.
Make the sauce and serve
Thicken the gravy with flour and butter.
Add the button onions, mushrooms, oysters, and fish quenelles to the gravy.
Season the sauce with anchovy, lemon juice, and cayenne.
Heat the sauce until boiling.
Pour the hot sauce over the fish.
Garnish with crayfish.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Red wine + crayfishtop 18% of all pairsAroma overlaplowMentioned together13 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Carrot + turniptop 2% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together8,001 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Allspice + peppertop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together6,395 recipes
Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
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Pepper + carrottop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together14,555 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Allspice + carrottop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together1,021 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fish
- Provides the main body of the dish, cooking gently in the wine and gravy.
- Red wine
- Adds acidity and depth, building the savoury flavour of the sauce.
- Gravy
- Forms the liquid base of the sauce, supplying savoury body and moisture.
- Flour
- Thickens the gravy into a smooth, coating sauce when cooked with butter.
- Button onions
- Add sweetness as they brown in butter, softening into the sauce.
- Mushrooms
- Add earthy flavour and a tender texture to the sauce.
The step that matters
Thicken the gravy with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked into the butter and liquid so it swells and thickens smoothly; if added raw or in lumps it leaves a pasty taste and uneven texture.
Flavor stand-ins for the allspice
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, onion, butter, red wine, pepper, carrot, turnip):
- Parsleybetter flavor fit
- Celerybetter flavor fit
- Thymebetter flavor fit
- Allspicethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against fish, onion, butter, red wine, pepper, carrot, turnip. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).
“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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