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Water Souchy

A fish stew made with flounder, parsley, peppercorns, water, served with bread and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Water Souchy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Rub the flounders with salt inside and out, and let them sit for 2 hours.

  2. In a pot, combine the flounders, parsley, peppercorns, and water.

Make the stew

  1. Stew until the fish are boiled to pieces.

  2. Pulp the fish through a sieve.

  3. Return the pulped fish and cooking liquid to the pot with some fresh parsley.

  4. Simmer until done.

Serve

  1. Serve in a deep dish with slices of bread and butter on the side.

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

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

  2. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 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

Flounders
Provide the fish that breaks down into the body of the stew.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma to the cooking liquid.
Peppercorns
Add a mild, warm spice to the cooking liquid.
Bread and butter
Served alongside to soak up the stew and add richness.

The step that matters

Pulping the fish through a sieve. Pressing the cooked fish through a sieve separates the flesh from the bones and skin. Pushing too hard or leaving bones behind affects the smooth texture of the finished stew.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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