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Brown Fish-sauce

A consommé of tench, perch, pike, and gurnet, enriched with vegetables, mushrooms, and a brown roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Brown Fish-sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cut the fish into pieces.

  2. Mince the leeks, onions, carrots, and celery root.

  3. Fry the vegetables in butter over moderate heat until golden.

  4. Add the fish and moisten with enough water and white wine to cover.

  5. Season with salt, small fish, parsley, aromatics, and mushrooms.

  6. Skim the liquid and boil quickly for 2 minutes.

  7. Move to the side of the stove to simmer until the fish is cooked.

  8. Strain the broth through a sieve and let it cool and settle.

  9. Skim off the fat and transfer the broth to a stewpan.

Clarify and finish

  1. Clarify with pike's flesh, eggs, and white wine as for fish consommé.

  2. Prepare a brown roux with butter and flour.

  3. Gradually moisten the roux with fish broth, stirring until boiling.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer gently for 45 minutes, skimming off fat.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Leek + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Pike's flesh
Clarifies the broth by trapping particles as it is heated with the stock.
Eggs
Help clarify the broth, binding impurities into a raft that can be strained off.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour in the frying and forms the base of the brown roux.
Flour
Thickens the broth when cooked into a brown roux, adding body and colour.
Leeks, onions, carrots, and celery root
Fried until golden to add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Gradually moisten the roux with fish broth. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour smooth and prevents lumps, so the roux thickens the broth evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (leek, carrot, celery, butter, white wine, fish, parsley):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against leek, carrot, celery, butter, white wine, fish, parsley. 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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