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Gravy for Baked Fish

A savory gravy made with onion, butter, stock, flour, parsley, walnut catsup, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 865 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Gravy for Baked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the onion and brown it in butter.

  2. Add the flour and allow it to brown.

  3. Pour in the stock and add parsley; let it simmer for 15 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture, then add salt and walnut catsup.

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 + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Browns the onion and adds richness and aroma to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the stock as it cooks, giving the gravy body.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the gravy.
Walnut catsup
Adds a savoury, tangy depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour must cook long enough to lose its raw taste and gain colour, but not scorch. Cooking it in fat first lets it thicken the stock smoothly without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, parsley, walnut):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, walnut. 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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