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Stewed Pish with Lemon Sauce

A fish stew flavored with lemon juice, butter, and a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Pish with Lemon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Add enough water to a saucepan to cover the fish, then add the celery and onion.

  2. Bring the water to a boil, then add the fish, butter, lemon juice, and salt.

  3. Remove the fish when tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Thicken the sauce with flour, then stir in the egg yolks carefully to avoid curdling.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  2. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 simmering liquid until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the cooking liquid and sauce.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity that brightens the flavour and gives the sauce its tang.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the fish instead of running thin.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it body and a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated but scramble and curdle if they get too hot or are added too quickly. Stir gently and keep the sauce below a simmer so it stays smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, fish, butter, lemon, flour, egg):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, fish, butter, lemon, flour, egg. 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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