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Carp Stewed

A fish stew made with carp, stock, mushrooms, onions, herbs, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Carp Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the fish in vinegar and water, then cut it into thick slices.

  2. Slice the onions and fry them until brown in 1 oz. of hot butter.

Make the sauce and stew

  1. Add the stock, mushrooms, herbs, nutmeg, salt, and pepper to the pan and warm it up.

  2. Add the fish and simmer gently for 30 to 40 minutes.

  3. Remove the fish and keep it warm.

  4. Knead the flour and remaining butter into a smooth paste, then add it to the stewpan.

  5. Simmer and stir until the sauce is smooth.

Serve

  1. Place the fish on a hot dish, strain the sauce over it, and garnish with heated mushrooms, fried roe, and toasted bread.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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, cooked gently until tender in the stock.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when onions are fried in it.
Flour
Kneaded with butter into a paste that thickens the stock into a smooth sauce.
Onions
Frying until brown adds sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and body to the sauce and serve as garnish.

The step that matters

Kneading the flour and butter paste into the stock. Adding the flour paste without simmering and stirring can leave lumps. Simmering while stirring lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, mushroom, butter, parsley, thyme, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, mushroom, butter, parsley, thyme, nutmeg, 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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