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Fish Soup

A broth of white fish, vegetables, and herbs, thickened with butter and flour, finished with egg yolks and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley 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

Make the stock

  1. Combine the fish, white stock, and water in a soup pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the parsley, tomatoes, celery, garlic, lettuce, mace, and bay leaf; boil for 1.5 hours.

  3. Strain the soup to remove solids.

Thicken and serve

  1. Blend butter and flour in a clean saucepan, then add the strained stock and boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Mix egg yolks and cream in a bowl; gradually add some hot soup, then pour the mixture back into the saucepan.

  3. Serve the soup in a tureen with fried bread on the side.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 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

White fish
Provides the main body and flavour of the soup as it simmers into the stock.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the strained stock into a smoother, body-rich soup.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and thicken it gently when tempered with hot liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream mixture. If the hot soup is poured into the yolks too quickly or the mixture boils, the eggs scramble. Tempering by adding small amounts of hot soup first gently warms the yolks so they thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, tomato, celery, garlic, parsley, lettuce, egg):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, tomato, celery, garlic, parsley, lettuce, egg. 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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