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A Hake

A stew of hake fillets cooked in a bacon, herb, and red wine broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,053 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: fish

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the head and fins from the hake and cut the body into three pieces.

  2. In a deep dish, layer the fish with the halved shallots and minced onion.

Make the gravy

  1. In a pan, brown the head, neck, ribs, liver, and heart in butter until well-seasoned.

  2. Add the bacon, herbs, carrot, and allspice to the pan and simmer in water until reduced by half.

  3. Strain the broth and add the fish pieces, cooking until fully done.

  4. Optionally, add ketchup to the gravy for extra flavor.

Serve

  1. If desired, brown half a dozen onions and serve them with the gravy around the fish.

  2. For leftover meat, remove it from the bones and combine with the remaining gravy, red wine, and water to make a soup.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Thyme + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,077 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Shallot + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,718 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

Hake
Provides the main flaky fish that cooks gently in the broth.
Butter
Browns the fish trimmings and adds richness to the gravy.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savoury fat that flavours the simmered broth.
Shallots
Add a mild sweetness and aromatic depth to the layered dish.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth to the leftover soup.

The step that matters

Reducing the simmered broth by half. Simmering concentrates the flavours of the bones, herbs and bacon into a rich gravy. Reducing too little leaves it thin and watery, while reducing too far can make it overly salty and intense.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, shallot, parsley, thyme, carrot, allspice, red wine):

  1. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, shallot, parsley, thyme, carrot, allspice, red wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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