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Baked Carp

A carp stuffed with Portuguese-style filling, baked with stock, onions, herbs, port wine, anchovies, and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Baked Carp

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the carp and stuff it with the prepared stuffing.

  2. Sew it up and brush the outside with egg yolk.

  3. Cover the carp with plenty of bread crumbs and baste with oiled butter.

Bake

  1. Place the carp in a deep dish with stock, onions, bay leaves, and herbs.

  2. Add port wine and anchovies, cover, and bake for 1 hour.

  3. Pour off the liquid and keep the fish warm.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Heat the liquid with butter rolled in flour, mustard, cayenne, and soy.

  2. Serve the fish garnished with lemon, parsley, and horseradish, with gravy in a sauce-tureen.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Basil + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Basil + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Carp
The main fish; its flesh flakes and turns tender as it cooks gently in the liquid.
Egg yolk
Brushed on the outside, it helps the bread crumbs adhere and promotes golden browning.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating over the outside of the fish.
Port wine
Adds depth, subtle sweetness and aroma to the braising liquid and the gravy.
Anchovies
Dissolve into the cooking liquid, adding savoury depth without a distinct fishy taste.
Butter
Rolled in flour and whisked into the hot liquid, it thickens the gravy and adds richness.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with butter rolled in flour. Whisk the butter and flour into the hot liquid so they blend without lumps, then let it simmer so the raw flour taste cooks off and the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, butter, fish, basil, thyme, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, butter, fish, basil, thyme, parsley. 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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