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Soup

Fish Meagre Soup

A clear fish soup made with meagre, mace, turnips, onions, celery, anchovies, egg, vermicelli, and a touch of liquid color.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fish Meagre Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the fish, mace, turnips, onions, and celery.

  2. Add the water or veal broth and simmer gently until the fish is cooked.

  3. Add the boned anchovies and strain the soup.

Clarify and finish

  1. Whisk the beaten egg and add it to the strained soup to clarify.

  2. Add a little liquid of color and strain through a tamis cloth.

  3. Finally, stir in the vermicelli.

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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mace + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Mace + celerytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,769 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

Skate or other fish
Gives the soup its flavor and body as it simmers.
Egg
Its proteins set when heated and trap particles, clearing the soup.
Vermicelli
Adds starch-based bulk and texture to the finished soup.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savory depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Whisk the beaten egg into the strained soup. Egg proteins coagulate as the soup heats, trapping suspended particles so they can be strained out. Adding the egg to a soup that is too hot or not properly strained can leave it cloudy or scrambled.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, turnip, onion, celery, veal, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, turnip, onion, celery, veal, egg. 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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