Skip to main content
Main

Simple Fish Soup

A fish soup made with haddock, whitings, carrots, onions, and herbs, simmered for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Simple Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced carrots, onion, shallot, clove, thyme, and parsley. Cook gently until they turn reddish.

  3. Pour in the cold water and bring to a boil, skimming occasionally.

  4. Add the haddock pieces and the bones and head of the whitings. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Simmer gently for 2 hours, then remove the bones and strain the soup through a coarse strainer.

Finish and serve

  1. Divide the whiting fillets into small portions and boil them in some of the stock for a few minutes.

  2. Add the chopped chervil and parsley to the soup and serve in a tureen.

  3. For a thicker soup, mix in 1 tablespoon of white roux before serving.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Haddock
Provides the main flaky fish flesh and savoury flavour to the broth.
Butter
Carries the aromatic vegetables and adds rich, rounded flavour to the stock.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and colour to the stock as they cook down.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and sweetness as it softens in the butter.
White roux
Thickens the soup slightly, giving it a fuller body and smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Simmering the stock gently. A gentle simmer keeps the stock clear, while a hard boil makes it cloudy and can break up the fish, so skimming and low heat matter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, shallot, clove, thyme, parsley, haddock):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, shallot, clove, thyme, parsley, haddock. 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.

More fish soup recipes

White 9Lake and Pond 6Water Soucy 6Brown 4Clear 3Russian 3 See all 129 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesBoiled HaddockBoiled Haddock10 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes