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Fish Soup

A broth of onions, tomatoes, herbs, stock, and fish, finished with flour and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Fry the onions in salad oil until light brown.

  2. Add the tomatoes and all other ingredients except the fish.

  3. Blend the flour with a little of the cold stock.

  4. Boil for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the slices of fish.

  2. Once they are firm, remove the herbs.

  3. Serve the fish soup with crusts of toast in the tureen.

  4. Optionally, add 1 teaspoon of curry powder with the flour.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 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

Flour
Thickens the stock so the soup has a fuller, body-rich texture.
Onions
Browning in the oil builds sweetness and a deeper savoury base.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, giving the soup its colour and tang.
Fish
Provides the main protein, which firms and flakes as it cooks.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that lift the flavour of the broth.

The step that matters

Poach the fish gently once it goes in. Fish proteins set quickly and toughen and break apart when the liquid boils hard. Keep the soup at a gentle simmer until the slices just turn firm.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, thyme, tomato, pepper, flour, fish, white wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, thyme, tomato, pepper, flour, fish, white wine. 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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