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Stewed Carp

A stew of carp slices cooked with butter, onions, stock, wine, herbs, mushrooms, and served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 Carp

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. In a stew-pan, warm the butter with a pinch of flour and the young onions until brown.

  2. Add the carp slices and moisten with stock and red wine.

Stew and serve

  1. Season with parsley, chives, eschalots, thyme, laurel leaves, mushrooms, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stew over medium heat until cooked through.

  3. Serve garnished with fried sippets of 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. Thyme + laureltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,444 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Chive + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 and becomes flaky and tender as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the onions brown, building flavour in the base.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth that balance the richness of the fish and butter.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy flavour and moisture to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Stew over medium heat until cooked through. Fish is delicate and overcooking makes it dry and tough, while undercooking leaves it unsafe. Gentle, steady heat cooks the slices evenly while keeping the flesh moist and intact.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, red wine, parsley, chive, thyme, laurel):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, red wine, parsley, chive, thyme, laurel. 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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