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Water Souchy

A fish stew made with fresh fish, white broth, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Water Souchy

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. In a stewpan, place the cleaned fish and cover with white broth.

  2. Add parsley, pepper, chopped onion, scraped horseradish, and bay leaf.

  3. Bring to a boil and skim carefully.

  4. Cook for a few minutes until the fish is done.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the fish to a deep dish lined with toasted bread.

  2. Strain the broth over the fish.

  3. Thicken the sauce with flour and butter.

  4. Add white wine, lemon juice, essence of anchovy, and catsup.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Whitings, flounders, dabs, gudgeons, or eels
Provide the main body of the stew, cooking through in the broth to become tender and flaky.
White broth
Poaches the fish gently and forms the liquid that becomes the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and helps give it a smooth, rounded texture when thickened.
Flour
Thickens the strained broth into a sauce with more body.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the poaching liquid.

The step that matters

Skim the broth as it comes to a boil. Skimming removes coagulated proteins and impurities that would otherwise cloud the broth and muddy its flavor. Keeping the heat controlled after that helps the delicate fish stay intact rather than breaking apart.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, fish, parsley, pepper, horseradish, flour, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, fish, parsley, pepper, horseradish, 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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