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Gravy for Ragouts of Fish {maigre}

A savory gravy for fish ragouts made with root vegetables, butter, spices, fish stock, herbs, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Gravy for Ragouts of Fish {maigre}

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the turnips, carrots, celery, eschalots, garlic, and onions.

Make the gravy

  1. In a stewpan, melt 2 ounces of butter and fry the vegetables until they glaze.

  2. Add 2 ounces of butter rolled in flour, salt, cayenne, mace, and cloves.

  3. Moisten with fish stock or cold water, and add parsley, thyme, basil, and mushrooms.

  4. Stew for 15 minutes, then add white wine and strain after 5 minutes.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts to fry the vegetables, and its flour-rolled portion thickens the gravy.
Flour
Coats the butter so it thickens the liquid into a smooth gravy.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, building the base flavour of the gravy.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the stewed liquid.
Fish stock or cold water
Provides the liquid that moistens and carries the flavours during stewing.

The step that matters

Frying the vegetables until they glaze. Frying in butter until the vegetables take on colour builds browned, sweet flavour. If they steam or burn, the gravy tastes flat or bitter.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, celery, garlic, onion, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, celery, garlic, onion, 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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