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Dressed Fish

A stew of eel pieces cooked with onion, herbs, peppers, mace, butter, flour, stock, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dressed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Chop the onion and fry until brown with herbs and flour in butter.

  2. Stir in the peppers, mace, a pinch of salt, and the stock.

  3. Add the eel pieces and let it stew slowly for about 30 minutes until cooked.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the fish with a slotted spoon and keep it warm in the oven.

  2. Add ketchup to the sauce, bring it to a boil, strain it over the eel, and serve.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Eel
Is the main protein, cooked gently in the stock until tender.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onion and herbs, adding richness and browning flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and onion.
Onion
Browns in butter to build the savoury base of the sauce.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the onion, herbs and flour until brown. The flour must cook in the butter long enough to lose its raw taste and help thicken the sauce, while the onion browns for depth. Burning turns the base bitter and dark.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, butter, flour, ketchup, fish):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, butter, flour, ketchup, fish. 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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