Skip to main content
Main

To Malte a Strong Fish Gravy

A strong fish gravy made from eels, water, toasted bread, mace, pepper, herbs, lemon peel, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Malte a Strong Fish Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Skin, gut, and wash the eels, then cut them into small pieces.

  2. Place the eel pieces in a saucepan and cover with water.

Make the gravy

  1. Add the toasted bread, mace, whole pepper, sweet herbs, and lemon peel.

  2. Boil the mixture until it becomes rich.

Thicken and finish

  1. In another saucepan, melt the butter and stir in a little flour until brown.

  2. Strain the fish gravy into the butter mixture and let it 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Eels
Provide the main fish flesh and body that give the gravy its savory base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor into the thickened gravy.
Flour
Thickens the liquid when cooked in butter, giving the gravy body.
Toasted bread
Adds toasted flavor and body to the simmered liquid.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in butter. Flour cooked in butter must be stirred continuously; if it burns or cooks unevenly, it gives bitter flavor, and if it is not cooked enough, the gravy tastes raw and thickens poorly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, lemon, butter, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, lemon, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes