Skip to main content
Main

Soup Garnishings

A fish soup made by boiling fish with salt, lemon, vinegar, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Soup Garnishings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the fish thoroughly and wipe it dry.

  2. If not using immediately, place the fish on ice, skin side down, away from milk or butter.

Cook

  1. Boil the fish for 10 minutes per pound in warm water.

  2. Add salt, lemon juice, lemon rind, malt vinegar, and soup vegetables to the water.

  3. Bring to a rapid boil, then simmer until the fish is cooked.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + carrottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

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

  4. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + celerytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,627 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh fish
Forms the main body of the soup and becomes tender as it cooks in the liquid.
Malt vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the flavour of the broth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the broth.

The step that matters

Bring to a rapid boil, then simmer until the fish is cooked. Fish protein sets and toughens if it is overcooked, and a hard boil can break the flesh apart. A gentle simmer after the initial boil keeps the fish moist and in pieces that hold their shape.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, malt, vinegar, carrot, celery):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Orangefits less well
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, malt, vinegar, carrot, celery. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes