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Cod or Ling Soup

A soup made from cod or ling, onions, celery, carrots, and spices, simmered until the fish is cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,172 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Fry the tail half of the cod or ling until brown.

  2. In a pot, combine the other half of the fish, onions, celery, and enough water to make a tureen of soup.

  3. Boil until the fish's substance is extracted, then strain the mixture.

Finish the soup

  1. Add boiled celery, boiled carrots, cayenne pepper, ketchup, mace, and cloves.

  2. Boil the mixture for about 30 minutes.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Mace + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Celery + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together16,001 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,144 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Cod or ling
Provides the main flavour and body of the broth as it simmers.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as they cook down.
Ketchup
Adds acidity and sweet-savoury depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Boil until the fish's substance is extracted, then strain. Boiling long enough draws flavour and body from the fish into the liquid, while straining removes bones and solids so the broth stays clear and smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, pepper, ketchup, mace, clove, carrot):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Turnipbetter flavor fit
  3. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, pepper, ketchup, mace, clove, carrot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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