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A fish stew made with white broth, herbs, and a sauce thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the fish and cut it into pieces.

  2. In a stewpan, add enough white broth to cover the fish.

  3. Boil down 2-3 dabs or flounders with their fins and trimmings to make broth.

Make the broth

  1. Add parsley, pepper, chopped onion, horseradish, and bay leaf to the broth.

  2. Bring the broth to a boil.

  3. Skim the broth carefully.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the fish until it is done, about a few minutes.

  2. Thicken the sauce with flour and butter.

  3. Add white wine, lemon juice, essence of anchovy, and catsup to the sauce.

  4. Strain the gravy over the fish.

  5. Serve the fish in a deep dish lined with toasted bread.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 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

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness to the thickened gravy.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds brightness and acidity that balances the rich sauce.
Whitings, flounders, dabs, gudgeons, or eels
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through in the broth.

The step that matters

Skim the broth carefully. Skimming removes foam and impurities that would cloud the broth and give the sauce a muddy flavour. Clear broth gives a cleaner-tasting gravy.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, veal, parsley, pepper, onion, flour, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, veal, parsley, pepper, onion, flour, butter. 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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