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Stewed Fish

A dish of filleted fish baked with onion, stock, spices, and a ketchup‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Stewed Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Fry the fish in egg and bread crumbs until golden.

  2. Slice and fry the onion until soft.

Bake

  1. Layer the fried onion and fish in a baking dish.

  2. Cover with stock and add the cloves, peppercorns, and mace.

  3. Cover the dish and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1 hour.

  4. Mix the flour and ketchup together and stir the mixture into the dish.

  5. Return to the oven for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish with the strained sauce over 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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it stews slowly in the stock.
Egg and bread crumbs
Form a golden, crisp coating on the fish when fried.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce as it cooks.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens and cooks down.
Ketchup
Adds acidity and sweetness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and ketchup into the dish. Flour mixed in raw can clump if added directly to hot liquid. Mixing it smoothly first helps it disperse evenly so the sauce thickens without lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, clove, flour, ketchup, onion, egg, bread):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, clove, flour, ketchup, onion, egg, 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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