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Stewed Fish

A stew of conger eel or haddock simmered in milk and water with butter, flour, salt, pepper, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

  1. Clean and wash the fish.

Stew the fish

  1. Place the fish in a stew pot with milk, water, and seasonings.

  2. Cover closely and simmer very gently for about 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. Work the butter into the flour on a plate until it forms a soft ball.

  2. Remove the fish.

  3. Add the butter to the milk.

  4. Let it boil and strain the sauce over the fish.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Conger eel or haddock
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through gentle simmering.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds richness and mild sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and carries flavour.
Flour
Kneaded with butter to form a paste that thickens the sauce when boiled.

The step that matters

Simmer very gently. Boiling vigorously toughens fish proteins and can break the flesh apart. A very gentle simmer with the pot covered cooks the fish evenly and keeps it moist and intact.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, milk, butter, flour, pepper. 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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