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Peptonised Fish Soup

A fish soup made by boiling turbot bones to form a jelly, then adding peptonised milk and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Peptonised Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the bones and trimmings of turbot until they form a stiff jelly.

  2. Allow the jelly to cool and skim off any impurities.

Make the soup

  1. Add the jelly to peptonised milk to create the soup.

  2. Flavor the soup with mace, lemon juice, pepper, and salt.

  3. Thicken the soup with corn flour.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bones and trimmings of turbot
Boiling them releases gelatin, which sets into the stiff jelly that gives the soup its body.
Peptonised milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and adds creaminess and a milky richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the soup and balances the richness of the milk and fish.
Corn flour
Starch that swells when heated, thickening the soup to a smooth consistency.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with corn flour. Corn flour must be fully mixed in and gently heated so the starch granules swell and thicken evenly. If it is added as lumps or boiled too briefly, the soup can stay grainy or uneven in texture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, milk, lemon, pepper, corn, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, milk, lemon, pepper, corn, flour. 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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