Skip to main content
Main

Fish Soup

A savory soup made with butter, carrots, onion, shallot, cloves, thyme, parsley, cold water, haddock, whitings, cod or turbot, and soles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan over low heat.

  2. Add the sliced carrots, onion, shallot, cloves, thyme, and parsley.

  3. Fry gently until the vegetables are reddish in color.

Make the soup

  1. Pour in the cold water and bring to a boil, skimming occasionally.

  2. Add the haddock pieces and the bones and head of the whitings.

  3. If using, add the cod or turbot head, or the soles' bones and fins.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and carries the aroma of the vegetables and herbs.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color to the base as they soften in the fat.
Onion
Builds the savory flavor base as it softens and browns gently.
Haddock
Provides the fish flesh and body of the soup as it cooks in the broth.

The step that matters

Fry the vegetables gently. Over high heat the onion and carrots can scorch and turn bitter before they release their sweetness. Low, slow frying softens them and builds a mellow, rounded flavor in the fat that carries into the broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, shallot, clove, thyme, parsley, haddock):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, shallot, clove, thyme, parsley, haddock. 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.

More fish soup recipes

White 9Lake and Pond 6Water Soucy 6Brown 4Clear 3Russian 3 See all 129 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesBoiled HaddockBoiled Haddock10 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes