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Stewed Smelts

Stewed smelts are smelt fish stewed in a sauce of stock, onions, capers, parsley, thyme, pepper, salt, and white wine.

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 ↓

Stewed Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the cleaned smelts in a china bake dish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine fish stock or veal stock, chopped onions, capers, parsley, thyme, pepper, coarse sea salt, and white wine.

  2. Bring the sauce to a boil, then pour it over the fish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for about 10 minutes, or until the fish is tender.

  2. Serve the smelts in the same dish.

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. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  5. Capers + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together309 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

Smelts
Provide the fish that becomes tender and flavourful as it cooks in the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce, brightening the rich fish flavour.
Chopped onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic depth to the cooking liquid.
Fish stock
Supplies the liquid that gently cooks the fish and carries flavour.

The step that matters

Bake only until the fish is tender. Smelts are small and thin, so they cook quickly. Overbaking dries the flesh and makes it tough, while the sauce keeps it moist only while it is still just cooked through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (smelt, fish, capers, parsley, thyme, pepper, white wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against smelt, fish, capers, parsley, thyme, pepper, white wine. 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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