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Fish Stock

A clear broth made by simmering fish, bones, vegetables, herbs, and spices in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Fish Stock

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the fish or fish bones in a large saucepan with the water and a little coarse sea salt, then boil gently for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the cleaned and chopped vegetables, herbs, and peppercorns, then boil gently for 4.5 to 5 hours.

  3. Strain the stock.

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 + thymetop 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fish or fish bones
Provides the main savoury flavour and body of the stock.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the stock.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic background flavour to the stock.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle. Boiling vigorously rather than simmering gently can emulsify fats and cloud the stock, and can make it taste harsher. A gentle simmer over several hours extracts flavour while keeping the liquid clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme, clove. 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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