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Cat-fish Soup

A soup of catfish, ham, parsley, marjoram, celery, and milk, finished with butter, flour, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cat-fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Scald the ham in boiling water 2-3 times to reduce saltiness.

Cook the soup

  1. In a soup kettle, combine catfish, ham, parsley, marjoram, celery, and pepper.

  2. Add 2 quarts of water, cover, and boil slowly until fish and ham are tender, skimming frequently.

Make the milk thickening

  1. In another vessel, boil 1 quart of milk and melt in the butter mixed with flour.

  2. Pour the hot milk mixture into the soup and stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Bring to a boil briefly to cook the eggs, then remove the celery seed bag.

Serve

  1. Serve in a tureen with toasted bread squares.

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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  3. Marjoram + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together615 recipes

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Marjoram + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Catfish
Provides the main body of the soup as it becomes tender during slow boiling.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavor to the broth as it simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so it lends body to the soup.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup as they cook gently in the hot liquid.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the broth's flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling after adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle or turn grainy if the soup boils too hard or too long. Bring it up only briefly, just until the yolks set and the soup thickens.

Swap the marjoram

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (catfish, ham, parsley, celery, milk, butter, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramthe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against catfish, ham, parsley, celery, milk, butter, flour. 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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