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Catfish Soup

A soup made with catfish, onions, parsley, pepper, salt, water, milk, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Catfish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the catfish and cut off the head.

  2. Cut the fish in half and place it in a pot.

  3. Add the onions, parsley, black pepper, and coarse sea salt.

Stew and finish

  1. Pour in 1 quart of water and stew slowly until the fish is tender.

  2. Add 1 pint of milk and let it simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Roll the butter in flour and add it to the pot.

  4. Cook for an additional 20 minutes until done.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter and flour
Rolled together and added at the end, the flour thickens the broth and the butter adds richness.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the broth as it simmers.
Catfish
Forms the main protein, becoming tender and flaky as it stews.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour. Flour dropped in as lumps can clump and stay raw, and it thickens best when rolled into the butter first and stirred into hot liquid so it disperses evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (catfish, parsley, pepper, milk, butter, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against catfish, parsley, pepper, milk, butter, 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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