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Fish Soup

A light soup made from fish bones, vegetables, and milk, finished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Remove the fish from the bones and set aside.

  2. Boil the bones, skin, and any scraps in 3 pints of water with a little salt.

  3. Once boiling, add the sliced celery and onion, and simmer for 2 hours.

  4. Strain the soup, then mix the flour with the milk until smooth.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the flour-milk mixture, chopped parsley, and cold fish pieces to the strained soup.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes, stirring often, then serve.

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

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the milk and soup, giving the broth a smooth, slightly thick body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a soft, mellow body to the soup.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they simmer into the stock.
Celery
Adds a fresh, vegetal aroma that flavours the simmering stock.
Fish remains
Flavour the stock and supply the fish pieces that are added at the end.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with the milk until smooth. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch granules swell on the outside before they can disperse. Blending it first into cold milk keeps the thickener evenly spread so the soup stays smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, parsley, milk, celery, 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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