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Stewed Trout

A trout simmered in butter, flour, veal stock, herbs, and optional wine or lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Stewed Trout

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the fish

  1. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour, mace, cayenne, and nutmeg.

  3. Add the cleaned trout to the pan and brown it lightly on both sides.

Stew and serve

  1. Pour in the veal stock and add the parsley, bay leaf, lemon peel, and salt.

  2. Stew the fish gently for 30 to 45 minutes, or longer if the fish is particularly large.

  3. Remove the fish and skim the fat from the gravy.

  4. Strain the gravy over the fish and serve immediately.

  5. Add acid or wine to the sauce if desired.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries flavour and fat into the pan, enriching the gravy and helping the fish brown.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells when heated in the melted butter.
Trout
Is the main protein, which firms and flakes as it cooks gently in the liquid.
Veal stock
Provides the liquid base and savoury body that becomes the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew gently rather than boiling. A gentle simmer cooks the fish evenly while keeping its delicate flesh from breaking apart. A hard boil toughens the protein, tears the fish, and makes the gravy cloudy.

“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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