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Fish Soup

A clear fish soup made with soles, stock, parsley, celery, onion, mace, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Skin the soles.

  2. Fillet the soles, cutting the fillets into penny-sized pieces.

Make the stock

  1. In a saucepan, combine the head, bones, and trimmings of the soles with stock, parsley, celery, onion, mace, pepper, and salt.

  2. Boil slowly for 3 to 4 hours.

  3. Skim the liquid.

  4. Strain the liquid.

  5. Return the strained liquid to the heat and bring to a boil.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the cut pieces of sole and cook until done.

  2. Remove the fish pieces.

  3. Place the fish pieces in a soup tureen with a little blanched chopped parsley.

  4. Strain the soup into the tureen.

  5. Serve.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Soles
Provide the fish pieces that become the soup's main protein, with bones and head adding flavor to the stock.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup, carrying the flavor of the simmered fish bones and trimmings.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the stock during the long simmer.
Celery
Contributes a fresh, savory aroma to the stock during simmering.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 3 to 4 hours. A gentle, slow simmer extracts flavor from the bones and trimmings without clouding the stock. A hard rolling boil emulsifies fat and fine particles into the liquid, making it cloudy and greasy. Skimming afterward removes the foam and fat that rise to the surface.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, celery, onion, clove, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, celery, onion, clove, pepper. 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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