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White Stewed Fish

A stewed fish dish finished with a warm egg and lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

White Stewed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Boil enough water to cover the fish with the onion, ginger, salt, black pepper, and whole red pepper.

  2. Add the fish steaks to the boiling water and cook until done.

  3. Carefully remove the fish, drain, and place in a dish.

Make the egg sauce

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in nutmeg, cayenne pepper, and chopped parsley.

  2. Strain the juice of the lemons and mix it with ½ cup of the strained fish cooking liquid.

  3. Gradually add the lemon mixture to the eggs while continuously beating.

  4. In a saucepan, combine the egg mixture and cook on low heat, stirring constantly until it thickens, but do not boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish and let it cool.

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 + lemontop 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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 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

Striped bass steaks
Firm white flesh that holds its shape while poaching and flakes when cooked.
Eggs
Coagulate when gently heated, thickening the lemon mixture into a smooth sauce.
Lemons
Provide acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the eggs.
Fish cooking liquid
Adds savory flavor and liquid to the sauce, carrying the fish's taste into it.

The step that matters

Adding the lemon mixture to the eggs. Adding the acidic liquid gradually while beating keeps the eggs from curdling. Then cooking gently over low heat, without boiling, lets the eggs thicken into a smooth sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (striped bass, ginger, pepper, egg, nutmeg, parsley, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against striped bass, ginger, pepper, egg, nutmeg, parsley, lemon. 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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