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Salmon Soup

A hearty soup made with fowl, ham, anchovies, salmon, celery, onions, and spices, finished with cream and optional lobster spawn.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Salmon Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the fowl, ham, anchovies, and salmon with butter over medium heat.

  2. Stew for 30 minutes without browning.

  3. Add 3 quarts of water and skim the surface.

  4. Incorporate celery, onions, parsley, cloves, allspice, and white pepper.

  5. Boil for 1.5 hours and strain through a fine sieve.

Make the soup

  1. In a separate pan, melt butter and mix with flour until light brown.

  2. Add the strained stock and stir until boiling, skimming off any butter.

  3. Stir in pounded salmon mixed with cream and optional lobster spawn.

  4. Add small pieces of boiled salmon just before serving.

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. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Browned with butter to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and browns with the flour to form the roux.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the pounded salmon enriching the soup.
Salmon
Gives the soup its main flavour, both as pounded fish and as boiled pieces.
Fowl
Provides a rich meaty base for the stock.

The step that matters

Browning the flour and butter. Cooking the flour in butter until light brown builds a roux that thickens the soup evenly. Stirring constantly prevents lumps and scorching, which would leave a bitter taste.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, salmon, butter, celery, onion, parsley):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, salmon, butter, celery, onion, parsley. 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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