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Ray Soup

A soup made from ray fish, fish stock, vermicelli, cream, egg yolk, served with a French roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,782 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ray Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the ray in fish stock until tender, then strain the liquid through a sieve.

  2. Return the liquid to the saucepan and bring it to a boil.

  3. Add the vermicelli and cook until tender, then remove from heat for 1 minute.

  4. Stir in the cream beaten with the egg yolk, and simmer for a few minutes without boiling.

Serve with the roll

  1. Heat the French roll in the oven.

  2. Soak the roll in some soup until moist.

  3. Place the roll in a bowl.

  4. Pour the soup over the roll before serving.

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. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Fish + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together937 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Ray
Provides the main fish flesh and body of the soup once boiled until tender.
Fish stock
Forms the flavourful liquid base that the soup is built on.
Vermicelli
Adds thin starch strands that soften in the broth and give the soup body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the soup.
Egg yolk
Thickens the cream mixture gently when warmed, giving the soup a silky body.
French roll
Soaks up soup to become moist and soft, serving as the base for the dish.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream and egg yolk without boiling. Egg yolk sets when heated and can curdle or turn grainy if the soup boils, so it should only simmer gently once the cream mixture is added.

“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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