Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Carp

A carp fillet stewed with salt, pepper, mace, onion, parsley, and sweet marjoram, served with cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stewed Carp

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scale the carp and remove the head, tail, and fins.

  2. Mix salt, pepper, and mace, then rub the mixture inside and out of the carp.

  3. Refrigerate the carp for 1.5 hours.

Stew and serve

  1. Place the carp in a kettle and cover with boiling water.

  2. Add onion, parsley, and marjoram.

  3. Simmer for 10 minutes per pound.

  4. Serve with cream sauce.

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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Carp
Forms the main body of the dish, supplying the flesh that becomes tender as it simmers.
Salt
Seasons the fish deeply and helps the flesh hold its moisture during cooking.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the poaching liquid as it softens.

The step that matters

Simmer for 10 minutes per pound. Simmering rather than boiling keeps the delicate flesh from breaking apart and turning tough. Timing by weight ensures the fish cooks through without overcooking, which dries out the flesh.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, parsley, marjoram, cream, sauce):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, parsley, marjoram, cream, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes