Skip to main content
Main

Fish Soup

A clear fish broth with vegetables, cornflour thickening, and diced fish, finished with lemon juice and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Remove all fat from the fish stock and place it in a saucepan.

  2. Add the white peppercorns, onion, turnip, herbs, and carrot.

  3. Boil for 20 minutes, then strain out the vegetables and return the stock to the saucepan.

Thicken and cook the fish

  1. Mix the cornflour smoothly with the milk and stir it into the stock, continuing to stir until it boils.

  2. Cut the fish into dice and add it to the soup, simmering for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add a few drops of lemon juice and salt to taste.

  2. Pour into a tureen and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

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

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

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Cornflour
Thickens the milk and stock into a smooth, lightly body-filled soup as it heats.
Milk
Adds richness and a mild creaminess that softens the soup's flavour.
Fish
Provides the main protein, cooking gently in the simmering broth until tender.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornflour into the stock. Cornflour mixed into liquid without being blended smoothly first forms lumps, and it must be stirred until it boils to thicken fully and evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, milk, turnip, carrot, lemon, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, milk, turnip, carrot, lemon, 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.

More fish soup recipes

White 9Lake and Pond 6Water Soucy 6Brown 4Clear 3Russian 3 See all 129 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipes