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Stewed Carp

A stew of whole carp cooked with onions, roots, herbs, wine, butter, flour, vinegar, anchovy, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stewed Carp

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a pot, combine the carp, onions, roots, parsley, leek, thyme, bay leaf, salt, pepper, and red wine.

  2. Add the butter, flour, and vinegar to the pot.

  3. Stew the carp until cooked through.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Remove the carp and strain the sauce.

  2. Reduce the sauce over medium heat, then stir in the anchovy and capers.

  3. Serve the carp with the sauce poured over it.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Leek + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  5. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Carp
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and flaky as it stews gently in the wine.
Red wine
Provides the liquid for stewing and adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy texture to the finished sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter and sauce.
Anchovy
Melts into the sauce, adding savoury depth without a distinctly fishy taste.

The step that matters

Reduce the sauce over medium heat. Reducing concentrates the wine and thickens the strained liquid, so the sauce gains flavour and body. Heating too hard can scorch the butter and flour or break the sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, leek, thyme, pepper, red wine, butter, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, leek, thyme, pepper, red wine, butter, flour. 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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