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Fish Soup

A thickened fish soup made with eels, butter, flour, and seasonings, served over fried fish fillets and forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and winter savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 780 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Slice the onions and fry them in butter until light brown.

  2. Add the eels (unskinned) and fry for about 5 minutes.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and skim carefully while boiling.

  4. Add allspice, black pepper, lemon thyme, winter savory, and parsley.

  5. Simmer the soup slowly for about 2 hours, skimming regularly.

Thicken and serve

  1. Strain the soup and thicken it by melting butter and mixing in flour until dry.

  2. Pour some soup into the butter‑flour mixture and stir until smooth, then gradually add the rest of the soup.

  3. Simmer for a few minutes, then strain into a clean saucepan over fried fish fillets and forcemeat balls.

  4. Keep hot and serve within 10 minutes.

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 + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together780 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Allspice + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together287 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Give the broth its main body and rich, fish-based flavour.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweetness and savoury depth into the broth.
Butter
Fat that browns the onions and, with flour, forms the thickening roux.
Flour
Thickens the strained soup when cooked with butter into a roux.
Fish fillets
Add flaky texture and extra fish flavour when fried and served in the soup.

The step that matters

Thickening the soup with the butter-flour mixture. Flour must be cooked in butter until dry, then whisked smoothly with soup before the rest is added; otherwise it can clump and leave a raw, pasty taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (allspice, pepper, lemon, thyme, winter savory, parsley, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against allspice, pepper, lemon, thyme, winter savory, parsley, butter. 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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