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Fish Stewed with Wine

A fish stew made with wine, water, onions, bread, butter, flour, ketchup, walnut pickle, and optional anchovy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fish Stewed with Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Combine fish, wine, water, sliced onions, toasted bread, salt, pepper, and butter in a kettle.

  2. Cover with enough water to cook and stew gently.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Before serving, pour the gravy into a saucepan.

  2. Roll butter in flour to thicken, then add ketchup and walnut pickle; stir until smooth.

  3. Pour the sauce over the fish to heat and serve hot. Add an anchovy if desired.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Flour
Thickens the gravy when rolled with butter and cooked into the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stew and helps thicken the sauce with flour.
Onions
Soften during stewing and add sweetness and body to the gravy.
Fish
Forms the main protein, cooking gently until tender in the stew.

The step that matters

Stewing gently. Gentle heat keeps the fish tender and intact, while a hard boil can break it apart and toughen the proteins. Thickening the sauce with a flour and butter roux needs stirring so lumps do not form.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, wine, bread, pepper, butter, flour, ketchup):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, wine, bread, pepper, butter, flour, ketchup. 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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