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Stewed Fish, Hebrew Fashion

A stew of fish simmered with parsley roots, onions, spices, and served with fish balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Fish, Hebrew Fashion

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Boil the parsley roots and onions in 1 quart of water until tender.

  2. Add ground white pepper, nutmeg, mace, saffron, lemon juice, and vinegar to the pot.

  3. Add the fish and let it stew for 20 to 30 minutes.

  4. Remove the fish and strain the gravy.

  5. Thicken the gravy with a little flour and butter.

Make the balls and serve

  1. Mix chopped fish, bread crumbs, spices, and egg yolks to form balls.

  2. Drop the balls into the gravy and let them boil.

  3. Return the fish to the pot and serve with the balls and parsley roots.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Saffron + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together538 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Parsley + saffrontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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, flaking tender as it stews in the gravy.
Egg yolks
Bind the chopped fish and bread crumbs so the balls hold together while boiling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body to the fish mixture, helping the balls keep their shape.
Flour
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the fish and balls.
Onions
Build a savoury, sweet base flavour in the stewed liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and balances the spices.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with a little flour and butter. Flour needs to be cooked into the hot liquid to thicken smoothly; added to cold or unmixed, it clumps and leaves a pasty texture instead of a silky gravy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, onion, nutmeg, mace, saffron, lemon, vinegar):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, onion, nutmeg, mace, saffron, lemon, vinegar. 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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