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Stewed Watercresses

A stew of boiled watercress with cullis, cream, salt, pepper, and flour, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 340 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Watercresses

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and wash the watercress.

  2. Boil the watercress until half cooked, then drain and squeeze dry.

  3. Chop the watercress and place it in a stewpan.

Stew and serve

  1. Add cullis, cream, salt, pepper, and flour to the stewpan.

  2. Stew gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Serve with fried bread on the side.

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. Watercress + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  4. Watercress + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Watercress + tomatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together158 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Watercress
Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it its fresh, peppery leafy flavour.
Cullis
Adds tomato body and acidity to the stew.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it stews, giving the sauce body.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 10 minutes. Gentle heat lets the flour hydrate and thicken the cream and cullis evenly. Boiling hard can scorch the cream, cause it to separate, or leave the flour lumpy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (watercress, cream, pepper, flour, bread):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against watercress, cream, pepper, flour, bread. 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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