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Stewed Halibut

A stew of halibut head and shoulders cooked with herbs, garlic, onions, anchovy, broth, mushroom catsup, vinegar, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Stewed Halibut

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the head and shoulders of halibut in a large stew pan.

  2. Add the faggot of herbs, garlic, onions, anchovy, broth, mushroom catsup, and vinegar.

  3. Ensure the fish is barely covered with the liquid and season with coarse sea salt to taste.

  4. Cover the pan tightly and let it stew gently.

  5. The dish is done when a fork easily pierces the thick part of 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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Clove + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut head and shoulders
Provides the main protein, which firms and flakes as it cooks gently in the liquid.
Onions
Soften as they stew, adding sweetness and body to the cooking liquid.
Anchovy
Dissolves into the liquid, adding savory depth to the broth.
Mushroom catsup
Adds concentrated savory, umami flavor to the stewing liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the rich stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Cover the pan tightly and stew gently. Gentle heat in a tightly covered pan keeps the liquid from boiling hard, which would toughen and break up the fish. Barely covering the fish with liquid keeps it moist while the steam cooks it evenly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, onion, anchovy, mushroom, vinegar):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, onion, anchovy, mushroom, vinegar. 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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