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Stewed Fish

A stew of white fish in a sauce of gravy, Madeira wine, Harvey sauce, lemon juice, oyster essence, anchovy sauce, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Stewed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the gravy and Madeira wine in a pot.

  2. Add Harvey sauce, lemon juice, essence of oysters, anchovy sauce, and pounded mace.

  3. Thicken the mixture with a bit of butter mixed with flour.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Stew the fish

  1. Add the fish slices and let them stew for 15 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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying all the other flavours.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce as it reduces.
Butter and flour
Thicken the sauce into a smooth, coating consistency.
Fish slices
Cook gently in the sauce, becoming tender and flaky while absorbing its flavour.
Anchovy sauce
Adds savoury, salty depth that enriches the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and mixed well into the liquid, or it will clump and leave a raw, pasty taste instead of a smooth sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (madeira wine, sauce, lemon, oyster, anchovy, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against madeira wine, sauce, lemon, oyster, anchovy, 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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