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Strong Fish Gravy

A thickened fish gravy made from eels or flounders, water, toasted bread, mace, and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Strong Fish Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Skin and gut the eels or flounders, then wash them thoroughly.

  2. Cut the fish into small pieces and place them in a saucepan.

Simmer the gravy

  1. Cover the fish with water and add the toasted bread, mace, and whole black pepper.

  2. Simmer until the flavors meld and the gravy thickens.

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 + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  3. Bread + macetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,005 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 flounders
Provide the protein and body that flavor the gravy as it simmers.
Toasted brown bread
Helps thicken the liquid as its starch softens and dissolves into the broth.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the gravy.
Whole black pepper
Adds mild pungent heat and aroma to the simmering liquid.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper. 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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