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Potage De Lentilles Au Poisson

A lentil soup cooked with sturgeon head, monkfish, and vegetable trimmings, finished with sturgeon broth and spring vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Potage De Lentilles Au Poisson

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the lentils and vegetable trimmings in cold water.

  2. Add the sturgeon head and monkfish pieces.

  3. Simmer slowly on the edge of the stove.

  4. Strain through a fine sieve, removing the cartilage.

Finish and serve

  1. Add enough sturgeon broth to achieve the desired consistency.

  2. Season to taste and serve with small spring vegetables.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lentils + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Thicken the soup and give it body as they break down during simmering.
Sturgeon head
Adds deep, savory fish flavor to the broth as it simmers.
Monkfish
Contributes firm fish pieces and additional savory flavor to the soup.
Sturgeon broth
Adjusts the soup to the desired consistency and reinforces the fish flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly on the edge of the stove. A gentle simmer extracts flavor cleanly and keeps the broth clear. A hard boil would emulsify fats and cloud the liquid, and could toughen the delicate monkfish.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, parsley, celery, carrot, leek, sturgeon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, parsley, celery, carrot, leek, sturgeon. 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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