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Fish Soup

A soup made with fish, vegetables, spices, and fried bori, simmered in water and seasoned with oil and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and coriander work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and 61 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the fish and fry in oil.

  2. Brown the vegetables in oil, except for the brinjals.

Make the soup

  1. Add water along with the pasted coriander, cumin, pepper, turmeric, chillies, and onions.

  2. Once boiling, add salt, brinjals, and the fried fish.

  3. Add fried bori if desired.

  4. When the vegetables are cooked, season the soup with boiling oil, cassia leaves, chillies, and panch-foron.

  5. Keep the soup thin.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Fish + coriandertop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together61 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Cumin + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,698 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Coriander + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,866 recipes

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

  4. Coriander + turmerictop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cumin + cassiatop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together101 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the soup and provides its savoury flavour once fried.
Vegetables
Add bulk, natural sweetness and body to the soup as they soften and brown.
Brinjals
Soften in the simmering broth, adding a creamy texture and absorbing the spiced flavour.
Onions
Build savoury depth and sweetness as they cook down into the base.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, coriander, cumin, pepper, turmeric, cassia, ghee):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  3. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, coriander, cumin, pepper, turmeric, cassia, ghee. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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