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Fish Soup

A clear soup made from a large fish, water, onion, herbs, butter, salt, pepper, optional Worcestershire sauce, served with fried bread squares and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Clean the fish thoroughly and place it in a pot with water.

  2. Add the chopped onion and sweet herbs.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Cook until the fish is tasteless.

  5. Strain the mixture through a colander.

  6. Return the liquid to the pot.

  7. Add butter, salt, and pepper to taste.

  8. Stir in Worcestershire sauce if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried bread squares and lemon slices.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Fish + buttertop 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

Fish
Gives the broth its main flavor and body as it cooks in the water.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded mouthfeel to the finished broth.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook until the fish is tasteless. The record gives no time or visual cue, so the cook must judge doneness. Fish cooked gently in water turns opaque and flakes easily; overcooking toughens the flesh and can make the broth taste stronger and less clean.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, pepper, sauce, bread, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, pepper, sauce, bread, lemon. 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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