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Stewing Fish

A stew of fish cooked in a sauce of water, red wine, spices, and a butter‑flour reduction.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewing Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the fish thoroughly.

  2. Dry the fish with a cloth.

  3. Sprinkle flour over the fish.

  4. Fry the fish in dripping or suet until light brown.

Make the stew

  1. In a stew pan, combine water, red wine, lemon pickle, browning sauce, mushroom powder, cayenne pepper, onion, and cinnamon stick.

  2. Add the fish (and blood if using carp).

  3. Cover the fish with the mixture.

  4. Stew gently over low heat until the gravy reduces to cover the fish.

Thicken and serve

  1. Remove the fish and place it on a serving dish.

  2. Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour.

  3. Boil briefly.

  4. Strain the gravy over the fish.

  5. Garnish with pickled mushrooms, scraped horseradish, and fish roe, some fried and some boiled.

  6. Squeeze lemon juice into the sauce before serving.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Red wine + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together720 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (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, cooked gently in the gravy until tender.
Flour
Coats the fish so it browns during frying, and thickens the gravy with butter.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth to the gravy as it reduces.
Butter
Enriches the gravy and, rolled in flour, thickens it as it melts in.
Fish roe
Adds richness and texture as a garnish, both fried and boiled.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour. Adding the butter and flour mixture to a boiling liquid without first letting it cook briefly can leave lumps and a raw floury taste. Whisking it in and boiling briefly lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the gravy smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, flour, red wine, lemon, sauce, mushroom, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, flour, red wine, lemon, sauce, mushroom, 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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