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Water Souchet of Soles

A clear broth made from soles, herbs, and spices, served with fish pieces, parsley, lemon, and brown bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Water Souchet of Soles

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Fillet the soles and cut the fillets into pieces.

  2. Put the bones and trimmings in a saucepan with pepper, chopped parsley roots, parsley leaves, mace, and salt.

  3. Cover with cold water and boil for 2 hours.

  4. Strain the liquid.

Cook the soup

  1. Add the fish pieces and shredded parsley roots to the strained liquid.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes, then add minced parsley and boil for 5 minutes more.

Serve

  1. Serve in a deep dish with enough liquid to cover the fish, garnished with lemon quarters, and serve with brown bread and butter.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Soles
Provide the delicate white fish pieces that form the body of the soup.
Parsley roots
Add a earthy, savoury depth to the broth as it simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the bread served alongside the soup.

The step that matters

Boiling the fish pieces. Fish cooks quickly, and extended boiling toughens its protein and breaks the flesh apart. Add the pieces to the hot strained liquid only for the stated time so they stay tender.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, parsley, lemon, bread, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley, lemon, bread, 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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