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Fish Stewed White

A stew of white fish with onion, spices, lemon, and saffron, finished with egg yolk mixture and fish balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fish Stewed White

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew base

  1. In a stew pan, heat oil and sauté the chopped onion until brown.

  2. Add ½ pint of water and the fish, seasoning with pepper, salt, mace, allspice, nutmeg, and ginger.

  3. Let it stew gently until the fish is cooked through.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a cup, mix the egg yolks, lemon juice, flour, cold water, and saffron.

  2. Pour the mixture into the stew pan, stirring carefully until it thickens.

  3. To make the balls, combine some fish, liver, roe (if available), chopped parsley, warmed butter, bread crumbs, and seasoning.

  4. Form this mixture into balls using eggs as a binder.

  5. Add the balls to the stew about 20 minutes before serving.

  6. Garnish with sliced lemon and parsley before serving.

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. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the stew into a smooth, silky sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the stew and balances the rich yolks.
Flour
Helps stabilise the egg mixture so it thickens without curdling.
Fish
Provides the main protein and flavour of the stew.
Bread crumbs
Bind the fish balls and give them a softer, lighter texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolk mixture into the stew. Egg yolks can curdle if the stew is too hot or stirred too vigorously. Stirring carefully over gentle heat lets the proteins thicken the liquid evenly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper, mace, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, mace, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, egg. 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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