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Soup

Lenten Broth

A fish broth flavoured with vegetables and herbs, enriched with milk and egg yolk and thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Lenten Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a pot, combine fish pieces and water.

  2. Add carrot, onion, turnip, celery, and herbs.

  3. Cook for 2 hours over medium heat.

  4. Remove fish, discard skin and bones, and return fish to the broth.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix boiling milk with egg yolk, lemon juice, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  2. Add this mixture to the broth.

  3. Thicken the broth with flour and butter.

  4. Pass through a sieve and serve hot.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Gives the broth its main savoury flavour as it simmers in the water.
Egg yolk
Enriches the broth and thickens it gently when heated with the milk.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness to the broth's texture.
Flour
Thickens the broth so it has more body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the flour thicken smoothly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the milk and egg yolk mixture. Egg yolk can curdle or scramble if it meets very hot liquid too quickly. Combine it with the boiling milk first and add it gradually, keeping the broth below a hard boil, so it thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, carrot, turnip, celery, milk, egg, lemon):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, carrot, turnip, celery, milk, egg, lemon. 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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