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To Stew Fish

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Stew Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine cullis, shallots, anchovies, bay leaf, horseradish, lemon peel, and Port wine.

  2. Season with Cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, and lemon juice.

  3. Bring to a boil and cook until thickened, then strain the sauce over the fish.

  4. Stew the fish gently in the sauce.

  5. Serve in a deep dish with the sauce and fried bread around it.

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. Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Shallot + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, shallot, horseradish, port wine, pepper, bread):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, shallot, horseradish, port wine, pepper, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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