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Mock Fish Soup

A creamy vegetable soup thickened with flour, butter, milk, and eggs, flavored with cayenne, mace, onion juice, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mock Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dumplings

  1. In a saucepan, combine white flour and potato flour.

  2. Add butter and milk, stirring constantly until smooth and no longer sticky.

  3. Remove from heat, let cool, and beat in eggs one at a time.

  4. Season with cayenne, mace, onion juice, salt, and sugar.

  5. Form small balls using a teaspoon and set aside.

Cook the soup

  1. In a pot, cover chopped carrots, parsnip, onion, and green pepper with boiling water and cook until tender.

  2. In another saucepan, melt butter, then stir in flour and add milk, bringing to a boil.

  3. Once vegetables are tender, stir them into the thickened milk with the cooking water, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  4. Add the balls and bring the soup to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat egg yolk with cream and stir in carefully before serving.

  2. Garnish with minced parsley.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dumpling mixture and help it set into firm balls when cooked.
Potato flour
Thickens the dumpling base and gives it a tender, soft body.
White flour
Thickens the milk and gives the dumpling dough its structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the dough and the soup, adding richness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dough and the thickened milk.
Egg yolk
Enriches the soup and thickens it slightly when stirred in with cream.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk and cream carefully. Egg yolk can curdle or scramble if it meets very hot liquid too quickly. Stirring it gently into the soup off the heat, after tempering it with cream, helps keep the soup smooth and silky.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, potato, butter, milk, egg, pepper, onion):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, potato, butter, milk, egg, pepper, onion. 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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