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Haddock Soup

A smoked haddock soup thickened with pea flour, flavored with onion, garlic, cloves, cinnamon, mace, sweet herbs, peppercorns, and optional tomato pulp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Haddock Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the smoked haddock in 3 pints of water.

  2. Add the onion, garlic, cloves, cinnamon, mace, sweet herbs, and peppercorns.

  3. Boil gently for 1 hour.

  4. Strain through a wire sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Bone the fish and remove the skin.

  2. Pass the flesh through the sieve into the soup.

  3. Thicken the soup with ½ packet of pea flour rubbed smooth in a little water.

  4. Add tomato pulp if desired and 2 ounces of butter.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with fried bread cut into dice.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Smoked haddock (in the method)
Gives the soup its main flavour and, once passed through the sieve, body.
Pea flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Rubbing the pea flour smooth before adding it. Pea flour clumps when added dry or unmixed. Rubbing it smooth in a little cold water first lets the starch disperse evenly, so it thickens the soup without lumps.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, garlic, cinnamon, mace, flour, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, garlic, cinnamon, mace, flour, 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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