Name: Soles or Carp Stewed in Cream
Ingredients: 3 to 4 soles or carp, middling sized; ½ to 1 pint sweet rich cream; ¼ teaspoon pounded mace; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; juice of ½ lemon; optional: lemon rind; optional: 1 teaspoon arrowroot mixed with a little milk

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Soles or Carp Stewed in Cream

Ingredients

3 to 4 soles or carp, middling sized
½ to 1 pint sweet rich cream
¼ teaspoon pounded mace
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
juice of ½ lemon
optional: lemon rind
optional: 1 teaspoon arrowroot mixed with a little milk

Directions

Prepare the fish

Prepare the fish by placing them in boiling water with a little salt for 2 minutes.
Remove the fish and let them drain.

Stew

In a wide stewpan, add enough cream to nearly cover the fish.
Season the cream with mace, cayenne, and salt.
If desired, boil lemon rind in the cream.
Stew the fish gently for 6 to 10 minutes, until the flesh separates easily from the bones.
Add arrowroot mixed with milk for thickening.
Stir the lemon juice into the sauce 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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together553 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + arrowroottop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together329 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,257 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Soles or carp: Provides the main body of the stew, becoming tender and flaking as it gently cooks.
Sweet rich cream: Forms the richly flavoured sauce and keeps the fish moist during gentle stewing.
Arrowroot: Thickens the cream sauce into a smooth, glossy consistency as it heats.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and balances its sweetness.

The step that matters

Stew the fish gently. Cream can curdle or separate if it boils hard, and fish turns dry and tough when overcooked. A gentle simmer cooks the flesh through while keeping the sauce smooth and the fish moist.

“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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Arrowroot Gruel37 recipes

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Soles or Carp Stewed in Cream