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Thick Fish Soup

A thickened fish soup made with butter, onions, flour, fish stock, herbs, egg yolks, cream, and Madeira or sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Thick Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onions and cook for 2-3 minutes without browning.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in the flour.

  4. Gradually add the fish stock, stirring continuously until it boils.

  5. Add the bay leaf, thyme, parsley, peppercorns, and salt, then boil for 30 minutes, skimming occasionally.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a separate saucepan, combine the egg yolks and cream.

  2. Take some of the boiling soup and pour it over the egg mixture, stirring quickly.

  3. Return the mixture to the stewpan, stirring briskly and bringing it back to a boil.

  4. Strain the soup into a tureen and stir in the Madeira or sherry.

  5. Serve with croutons.

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. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the soup and carries the onion flavour during the initial cooking.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, body-rich soup as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup into a silky texture when gently heated with cream.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the soup's texture alongside the egg yolks.
Fish stock
Forms the main liquid and provides the core seafood flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture back to the soup. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot too fast. Tempering with some hot soup first, then stirring briskly while bringing it back to a boil, keeps the mixture smooth. Boiling it too long can curdle the yolks.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, fish, thyme, parsley, egg, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, fish, thyme, parsley, egg, cream. 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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