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Soup

Ray Soup

A soup made from ray, 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the ray in the fish stock until tender and broken into pieces.

  2. Strain the liquid through a sieve and return it to the saucepan.

  3. Bring the liquid to a boil again and add the vermicelli.

  4. Once the vermicelli is tender, remove the saucepan from the heat.

  5. Stir in the cream beaten with the egg yolk and let it simmer for a few minutes without boiling.

Serve

  1. Heat the French roll in the oven, soak it in some soup until moist, and place it in a tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the roll and serve.

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 flesh and flavour that the soup is built on.
Egg yolk
Thickens the cream mixture gently and adds richness when stirred in off the heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the soup.
Vermicelli
Adds body and a soft, starchy texture as it cooks in the broth.
French roll
Soaks up soup to become moist and act as a base for the soup.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream and egg yolk off the boil. Egg yolk thickens when heated gently, but at a boil it can scramble and curdle. Keeping the soup below boiling while it simmers lets the mixture thicken smoothly.

“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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