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Fish Soup

A broth made from a fish head, vegetables, herbs, and spices, finished with rice, halibut, lemon, egg yolk, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a saucepan, combine the fish head, soup vegetables, herbs, salt, pepper, curry powder, and water.

  2. Simmer slowly for 1½ hours.

  3. Strain the broth through cheesecloth into another saucepan.

Cook and finish

  1. Add the rice and boil slowly for 15 minutes.

  2. Add the halibut pieces and simmer for 15 minutes.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice and the egg yolk mixed with cream, and cook for a few moments without boiling.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Fish + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together270 recipes

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

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

Halibut
Firm white fish pieces that hold their shape and flake gently while simmering in the broth.
Egg yolk
Thickens the soup slightly and adds richness when stirred in off the boil.
Cream
Adds fat and smoothness, softening the broth's flavour and giving body.
Raw rice
Releases starch as it boils, thickening the broth and adding body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the broth and fish.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream. If the egg yolk and cream boil, the egg proteins can curdle and turn grainy. Stirring them in off the heat and cooking only gently keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper, rice, egg, cream):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, rice, egg, cream. 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 →

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