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A Strong Fish Gravy

A strong fish gravy made by simmering fish with aromatics, then thickening with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

A Strong Fish Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Skin or scale the fish and gut the fish.

  2. Wash them to remove grit, then cut the fish into small pieces.

  3. Place them in a saucepan and cover the fish with water.

Make the gravy

  1. Add the toasted bread, mace, whole pepper, sweet herbs, and lemon peel.

  2. Bring to a boil, then let it simmer until rich and flavorful.

  3. Melt the butter in the saucepan.

  4. Sprinkle in the flour and stir until browned.

  5. Strain the gravy into the saucepan.

  6. Let it boil for a few minutes.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eels or fish
Provide the main body and rich flavor that the gravy is built on.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy and, once browned, adds a nutty, toasted flavor.
Toasted bread
Adds body and helps thicken the stock as it simmers.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. Flour cooked in fat must be stirred until it turns golden brown, which develops flavor and removes raw starch taste. Stopping too early leaves a pasty, floury gravy, while going too far can scorch it and make it bitter.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

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