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Stew Tng

A fish stew made with stale beer, red wine, mace, and other aromatics, served with fried bread and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 23 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stew Tng

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the fish and roe in stale beer.

  2. Preserve the blood.

  3. Boil the fish with a little salt in water.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain the beer into a saucepan with red wine, mace, whole pepper, onion with cloves, bruised nutmeg, sweet herbs, lemon peel, anchovy, and horseradish.

  2. Boil gently for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the liquid.

  4. Add half the hard roe, ketchup, butter, and mushroom pickle to the strained liquid.

  5. Boil and stir until thick.

Make the cakes

  1. Beat the remaining roe with egg yolk, nutmeg, and chopped lemon peel.

  2. Fry in butter as small cakes.

  3. Fry the bread triangles until brown.

Serve

  1. Once the fish is cooked, pour the sauce over it.

  2. Arrange the cakes around the dish.

  3. Garnish with scraped horseradish and fried parsley.

  4. Serve with fried bread and sliced lemon.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 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

Stale beer
Adds a malty, bitter depth to the stew's liquid base.
Red wine
Adds acidity and fruity depth that balances the rich sauce.
Hard roe
Adds richness and body, setting into the sauce and cakes.
Egg yolk
Binds the roe mixture so the cakes hold their shape.
Butter
Adds richness and gloss to the sauce and browns the cakes.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and tang to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil and stir until thick. Egg-free sauces thicken through reduction and starch, and stirring prevents scorching on the base of the pan. Over-boiling a butter-enriched sauce can cause it to break and turn greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beer, red wine, mace, pepper, clove, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beer, red wine, mace, pepper, clove, nutmeg, lemon. 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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