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Stewed Trout

A trout stewed in butter, flour, spices, veal stock, parsley, bay leaf, lemon peel, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Trout

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and seasonings until well combined.

Stew the trout

  1. Add the cleaned trout to the pan and cook until lightly browned on both sides.

  2. Pour in the veal stock and add the parsley, bay leaf, lemon peel, and salt.

  3. Stew the fish gently for 30 to 45 minutes, or longer if the fish is particularly large.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the trout from the pan and skim the fat from the gravy.

  2. Strain the gravy 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the gravy with fat and helps the flour cook into a smooth base.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy that coats the fish.
Veal stock
Forms the liquid that gently cooks the trout and becomes the gravy.
Trout
The main fish, which firms and cooks through during the slow stew.

The step that matters

Stewing the fish gently. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer cooks the trout through while keeping its flesh moist and tender. A hard boil can break the fish apart and make the gravy cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, nutmeg, veal, parsley, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, nutmeg, veal, parsley, 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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