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Cat-fish Soup

A soup made from catfish, ham, parsley, celery, milk, butter, eggs, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Leslie · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cat-fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the heads, skin, clean, and cut the catfish into thirds.

  2. Add a pound and a half of ham to the twelve small catfish, cut the ham into small pieces, and scald it two or three times in boiling water to reduce saltiness.

  3. Chop together a bunch of parsley and some sweet marjoram stripped from the stalks.

Make the soup

  1. Put these ingredients into a soup kettle and season them with pepper; the ham will make it salt enough.

  2. Add a head of celery cut small, or a tablespoonful of celery seed tied up in a bit of clear muslin to prevent its dispersing.

  3. Put in two quarts of water, cover the kettle, and let it boil slowly until everything is sufficiently done, and the fish and ham are quite tender. Skim it frequently.

Finish and serve

  1. Boil in another vessel a quart of rich milk, in which you have melted a quarter of a pound of butter divided into small bits and rolled in flour.

  2. Pour the hot milk mixture into the soup, and stir in at the last the beaten yolks of four eggs.

  3. Give it another boil, just to take off the rawness of the eggs.

  4. Before serving, remove the backbones of the catfish.

  5. Put the soup into a tureen, taking out the bag of celery seed before serving, and adding some toasted bread cut into small squares.

  6. In making toast for soup, cut the bread thick, and pare off all the crust.

  7. Eel soup may be made in the same manner; chicken soup also.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

336Calories
15 gProtein
25 gFat
14 gCarbs

Counts 5 of 6 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Celery1 stalk (40g)6
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Leslie. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + fishtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Catfish (in the method)
Provides the main flesh, which becomes tender as it simmers slowly in the broth.
Ham (in the method)
Adds savory, smoky depth to the broth as it simmers with the fish.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy body to the finished soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and with the flour helps thicken the milk mixture.
Eggs
Egg yolks thicken and enrich the soup as they gently heat.
Celery
Adds a subtle aromatic, vegetal flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the hot milk mixture. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but scramble and turn grainy if the soup is too hot or boils hard after they go in. Stirring in the beaten yolks at the end and then giving only a brief boil keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, milk, butter, fish, egg. 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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