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Stewed Fish

A stewed haddock dish flavored with salt, flour, milk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Stewed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Sprinkle salt over the haddocks and dip them in flour.

  2. Divide the fish lengthways and roll them up neatly.

Stew the fish

  1. Place the fish in a saucepan with ½ cup of milk.

  2. Bring to a boil and stew gently for 10 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Mix 2 teaspoons of flour with 1 cup of milk.

  2. Carefully lift out the fish.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the saucepan with 2 teaspoons of butter and a little salt until it thickens.

  4. Pour the sauce over the fish and serve immediately.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Haddock + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together764 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Haddock + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together401 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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

Haddock
Forms the main body of the dish, holding its shape when rolled and stewed.
Flour
Coats the fish and its starch thickens the milk into a smooth sauce.
Milk
Provides the cooking liquid for the fish and the base of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the saucepan until it thickens. Flour starch thickens when heated in liquid but can clump if added unevenly. Stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce turns smooth rather than lumpy.

“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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