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Small Fish Fricasseed

Small fish are fried and served in a sauce of gravy, wine, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Small Fish Fricasseed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish balls

  1. Fry the fish until golden brown and drain them.

  2. Remove the meat from another small fish and chop it finely.

  3. Mix the chopped fish with grated bread, lemon peel, parsley, pepper, salt, nutmeg, egg yolk, and butter to form small balls.

  4. Fry the balls until golden.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine gravy and flour, then add red wine and bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in cayenne pepper, catsup, and lemon juice.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the fried fish and balls to the sauce and simmer for a few moments.

  2. Serve garnished with lemon.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Binds the chopped fish and bread into balls that hold their shape when fried.
Grated bread
Absorbs moisture and softens the fish mixture so the balls stay tender inside.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the fish balls brown when fried.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce that coats the fish.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the fish balls until golden. The balls are held together only by egg yolk and bread, so they can break apart if the oil is not hot enough or they are turned too early. Frying until golden sets the outside into a crust that holds the ball together before it goes into the sauce.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper, egg, butter, bread, lemon, parsley):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, egg, butter, bread, lemon, parsley. 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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