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Catfish Stewed with Tomatoes

A stewed catfish dish cooked with tomatoes, butter, water, green onions, and red pepper, served with dry toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Catfish Stewed with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Sauté the catfish slices in butter or drippings in a frying pan until partly browned.

  2. Add water, minced green onions, and red pepper to the pan.

  3. Strain the can of tomatoes through a colander and add to the fish.

  4. Cook together for about 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with strips of dry toast.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Catfish + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together175 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Catfish
Provides the main protein, which browns partly in the fat to add savory flavor.
Butter or drippings
Fat for browning the catfish, adding richness and savory flavor.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the liquid, shaping the stew's flavor and texture.
Green onions
Add mild onion aroma and sharpness that mellows during cooking.

The step that matters

Partly brown the catfish in the fat. Browning the fish surface in fat builds savory flavor through the Maillard reaction. Stopping at partial browning keeps the delicate fish from overcooking before the stew simmers.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against catfish, butter, onion, 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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