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Turbot Soup a LA Cardinal

A fish soup made with leftover turbot, stock, vegetables, herbs, and served with oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 ↓

Turbot Soup a LA Cardinal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Pick out the best pieces of leftover turbot and remove the head bones.

  2. Place the smaller pieces and chopped bones in a stewpan.

  3. Add 3 pints of white stock, 2 onions, 1 carrot cut in half, 1 small head of celery, and enough cold water to cover the turbot.

  4. Add a bouquet of thyme and parsley.

  5. Simmer until well combined and flavorful.

Strain and season

  1. Strain the soup through a tammy cloth, twisting to extract all liquid.

  2. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

Serve with oysters

  1. Pour half a pint of soup over trimmed oysters and set aside.

  2. Heat both the soup and oysters in a bain-marie before serving.

  3. Place oysters in a soup tureen and pour hot soup over them 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Leftover boiled turbot
Provides the main fish flavour and body of the soup.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the vegetables and fish.
Oysters
Add a briny, delicate seafood flavour to the finished soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, carrot, celery, thyme, parsley, pepper, oyster):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, carrot, celery, thyme, parsley, pepper, oyster. 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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