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Fish Soup

A hearty soup made with butter, carrots, onions, celery, shallots, garlic, cloves, bay leaf, thyme, parsley, white wine, boiling water, salt, pepper, and fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter.

  2. Add the carrots, onions, celery, shallots (or garlic), cloves, bay leaf, thyme, and parsley; fry until browned.

  3. Pour in the white wine and boiling water.

  4. Stir in the salt and pepper, then add the fish.

Simmer and serve

  1. Let the mixture simmer for 2 hours.

  2. Strain the soup through a cloth and serve hot.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat for frying the vegetables, adding richness and helping them brown.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the broth.
Fish
Provides the main flavour and body of the soup as it simmers.
Onions
Build sweetness and savoury depth when browned in butter.

The step that matters

Frying the vegetables until browned. Browning caramelises the natural sugars in the carrots, onions and celery, creating deeper savoury flavour in the finished broth. Pale vegetables give a flatter, less complex soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, celery, shallot, clove, thyme, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, celery, shallot, clove, thyme, parsley. 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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