Skip to main content
Main

Fish Stock

A clear broth made by simmering fish bones, skin, onion, herbs, lemon juice, peppercorns, cloves, and salt in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Fish Stock

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine fish bones, skin, cold water, onion, herbs, lemon juice, peppercorns, cloves, and salt in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture slowly to a boil and skim off any foam that forms on the surface.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer for one hour.

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. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

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

  4. Fish + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,924 recipes

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

  5. Onion + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

White fish bones and skin
Provide the gelatin and flavor that give the stock body and savory taste.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock as it simmers.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the stock.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture slowly to a boil and skim the foam. Starting with cold water and heating gently lets proteins and impurities rise to the surface as foam. Skimming them off keeps the stock clear and clean-tasting. Boiling hard too early would emulsify impurities into the liquid and make it cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, lemon, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, lemon, clove. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipes