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Fish Soups

A soup made by simmering skate, flounders, and eels with water, mace, pepper, sea salt, onion, celery, parsley, and sweet herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and cut the skate, flounders, and eels into pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Cover the fish with water and season with mace, pepper, coarse sea salt, the onion with cloves, celery, parsley roots, and sweet herbs.

  2. Simmer in a covered stew-pan for 1.5 hours.

  3. Strain the soup for use.

Brown soup option

  1. For brown soup, fry the fish in butter before adding water and seasoning.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Skate
Provides the main body of fish flavour and gelatin that gives the soup body.
Flounders
Adds delicate fish flavour to the broth as they simmer.
Eels
Contribute rich flavour and body to the soup as they cook down.
Butter
Browns the fish when fried first, adding toasty, deeper flavour to the brown soup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently in a covered stew-pan. A gentle simmer extracts flavour and gelatin from the fish without breaking it up or making the broth cloudy. Boiling vigorously can emulsify fat and cloud the liquid, so keep the heat low and steady.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, clove, celery, parsley, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, clove, celery, 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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