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Stock for White or Brown Fish Soup

A stock made from eels, flounders, skate, celery, parsley roots, onion, sweet herbs, pepper, salt, mace, and optional liquor from potted fish.

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 ↓

Stock for White or Brown Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut the eels into 1½ to 2-inch pieces.

  2. Cut up the flounders and skate.

Simmer the stock

  1. Place fish in a pan and cover with water.

  2. Add celery, parsley roots, onion (stuck with cloves), and sweet herbs.

  3. Season with pepper, salt, and mace.

  4. Cover and simmer for 1 hour and 45 minutes.

  5. Strain the stock for use.

Brown soup option

  1. For brown soup, fry the fish in butter before adding to the stock.

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

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 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

English eels
Provide rich body and gelatin-rich flavor to the stock.
Flounders
Add delicate fish flavor and body to the stock.
Skate
Adds gelatin from its cartilage, giving the stock more body.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savory flavor to the stock.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the stock.

The step that matters

Simmer gently and cover. A gentle simmer extracts flavor and gelatin from the fish without clouding the stock. A hard boil breaks up the fish and makes the liquid cloudy and greasy.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, celery, parsley, onion, pepper. 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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