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Carp Stewed White

A carp stew cooked with white wine, herbs, onions, and a sauce of anchovies, butter, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Horse and radish work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 529 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Carp Stewed White

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the carp

  1. Place the carp in a stewpan with water, white wine, pepper, salt, mace, sweet herbs, onions, and horseradish.

  2. Cover and simmer for 1.5 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a separate saucepan, combine white wine, onion, anchovies, butter, lemon peel, cream, and some of the cooking liquid.

  2. Boil for a few minutes, then stir in egg yolks and lemon juice.

  3. Pour the sauce over the fish and serve.

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. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Onion + radishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetal (cream, earthy).

  4. Pepper + radishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together382 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Carp
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the simmering liquid until flaky.
Butter
Adds richness and body to the sauce, with flour helping it thicken.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a smooth, creamy texture when stirred in gently.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Anchovies
Contribute savory depth to the sauce, blending into it as they dissolve.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the sauce boils after they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Add them off the boil and stir steadily.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, pepper, onion, horse, radish, butter, flour):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, pepper, onion, horse, radish, butter, flour. 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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