Skip to main content
Main

Carp with Beer

A carp dish braised with beer, butter, onions, celery, parsley, spices, and gingerbread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Carp with Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scale and split the carp in two, removing as many bones as possible.

  2. Butter the bottom of a flat stewpan and layer with sliced onions.

  3. Place the carp pieces on top, removing the gall-stone and cutting the head in two.

Braise

  1. Season the fish with salt, add chopped celery, parsley, thyme, peppercorns, cloves, and diced gingerbread.

  2. Moisten the fish with beer and bring to a boil over high heat for 7-8 minutes.

  3. Reduce heat to moderate and finish cooking the fish until the sauce thickens and is well-colored.

Serve

  1. Serve the carp on a hot dish, skimming the fat from the sauce and pouring it over the fish.

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

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

  2. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carp
Forms the body of the dish; its protein firms and turns opaque as it cooks.
Beer
Provides the cooking liquid that braises the fish and flavors the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base layer and carries flavor from the aromatics.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, building a mellow aromatic base for the sauce.
Gingerbread
Its starch helps thicken the sauce, and its sugars add sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Reducing the heat after the boil. Once the liquid has boiled hard, dropping to moderate heat lets the fish cook through gently without breaking apart, while the sauce reduces and thickens slowly and browns evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, celery, parsley, clove, beer):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, celery, parsley, clove, beer. 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.

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes