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White Fish Soup

A light soup made from haddock or cod, cream, milk, and fish balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Haddock and cream work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 181 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

White Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cut the fish into pieces and boil in 1 gallon of water until the flesh separates from the bones.

  2. Strain the soup, then add ½ pint of cream and 1 pint of fresh milk.

Make the fish balls

  1. Remove the nicest parts of the fish, mince them, and mix with eggs and bread crumbs to form small balls.

Finish and serve

  1. Bring the soup to a boil, season with salt, and thicken with a little flour.

  2. Serve the soup with the fish balls added.

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. Haddock + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together181 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Haddock or cod
Provides the main flavour and, once minced, the body of the fish balls.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the soup.
Fresh milk
Adds body and mild sweetness, softening the broth's flavour.
Flour
Thickens the soup by swelling with heat to give it body.
Eggs
Bind the minced fish so the balls hold their shape.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the fish balls hold together with the egg.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour. Flour must be stirred in well and the soup kept at a simmer so the starch swells evenly. Added to a boiling liquid without thorough mixing, it forms lumps that stay in the soup.

“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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