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Fish, Stewed

A Passover fish stew with liver, bread crumbs, and egg, simmered in water with onion, parsley, ginger, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and liver work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and 79 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the stew base

  1. Heat the oil in a pot and sauté the chopped onion until soft.

  2. Add the white fish and cook until it begins to flake.

  3. Pour in the water and season with parsley, ginger, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

Form and simmer

  1. In a bowl, mix the liver, bread crumbs, chopped parsley, egg, and seasonings.

  2. Form the mixture into balls and add them to the pot.

  3. Cover and simmer gently for about 1 hour until everything is cooked through.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Fish + livertop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together79 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

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

  3. Ginger + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Fish + breadtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,661 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

White fish
Forms the body of the stew and flakes into the broth as it cooks.
Liver
Adds rich, savory depth and firms the fish balls when combined with egg.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the fish balls hold their shape.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the balls set firmly during simmering.
Onion
Softens and adds sweetness and aromatic base flavor to the stew.

The step that matters

Simmer gently with the covered pot. A gentle simmer cooks the egg-bound fish and liver balls through without boiling them apart. Vigorous boiling can break up the delicate mixture and make the balls tough, so keep the heat low and the lid on.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, parsley, ginger, nutmeg, pepper, liver, bread):

  1. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, parsley, ginger, nutmeg, pepper, liver, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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