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Fish Soup

A broth made from white or freshwater fish, onion, butter, Chablis, tomato, and parsley, served with fried toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Cut off the best pieces of the fish.

  2. Boil the bones and other parts of the fish in 1 quart of water for 1 hour.

  3. Let the liquid cool.

Cook the soup

  1. Slice the onion and brown it in 1 ounce of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the reserved fish pieces, pepper, salt, Chablis, and sliced tomato.

  3. Strain the liquid from the fish bones and pour it into the saucepan.

  4. Add chopped parsley and simmer for 15 minutes.

  5. Serve with fried toast.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Provides the main body of flavour and the flesh of the soup.
Butter
Carries flavour and helps the onion brown in the saucepan.
Onion
Browns in butter to add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth.
Chablis
Adds acidity and aromatic complexity to the soup.
Tomato
Adds acidity, body and a fresh, mild sweetness to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil the bones and other parts of the fish in 1 quart of water for 1 hour.. A gentle, steady simmer extracts flavour from bones without making the broth cloudy or greasy. A hard, rapid boil can break up the liquid and muddy the stock.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, pepper, tomato, parsley):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, pepper, tomato, parsley. 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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