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Carp or Tench Stewed with Wine

A fish stew of carp or tench simmered in consommé and Madeira wine, finished with sauce tournée, lemon, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Carp or Tench Stewed with Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Crimp the cleaned carp or tench two or three times.

  2. Place the fish in a stewpan with consommé, Madeira, salt, bay leaf, and peppercorns.

  3. Stew gently over low heat until the fish is cooked through.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the fish and place it on a serving dish.

  2. Reduce the cooking liquid by adding sauce tournée and simmer until thickened.

  3. Strain the sauce, then stir in lemon juice and cayenne pepper.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish and garnish with veal forcemeat.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Madeira wine + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together230 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pepper + vealtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Madeira wine + vealtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together211 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Carp or tench
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it gently poaches in the liquid.
Consommé
Provides the savoury liquid base that cooks the fish and flavours the sauce.
Madeira wine
Adds depth and a rich, slightly sweet aroma to the cooking liquid.
Sauce tournée
Thickens the reduced cooking liquid into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Stewing the fish gently over low heat. Fish proteins toughen and dry out quickly at high heat, so a gentle simmer keeps the flesh moist and tender until it is just cooked through.

“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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