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Stewed Trout

A trout simmered in butter, flour, spices, veal stock, parsley, bay leaf, lemon peel, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Trout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Melt the butter in a broad iron saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour and seasonings.

  3. Clean and dry the trout, then add it to the pan.

  4. Brown the trout lightly on both sides.

Stew and serve

  1. Pour in the veal stock and add parsley, bay leaf, lemon peel, and salt.

  2. Stew gently for 30 to 45 minutes, or longer if the fish is large.

  3. Serve the trout immediately after skimming the fat from the sauce and straining 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the flour form a smooth base and carrying flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce as it is stirred with the melted butter and stock.
Trout
The main fish, which firms as it cooks and gives the dish its body and flavour.
Veal stock
Forms the stewing liquid, adding savoury depth and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 30 to 45 minutes. Gentle heat, not a rolling boil, keeps the trout tender and intact. Vigorous boiling toughens the proteins and breaks the fish apart, and larger fish need the longer end of the range to cook through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, nutmeg, veal, parsley, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, nutmeg, veal, parsley, lemon. 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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