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Water Souchy

A fish soup made with flounder, parsley, peppercorns, and water, served with bread and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Water Souchy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Rub the flounders inside and out with salt and let them sit for 2 hours.

Make the broth

  1. In a pot, combine the flounders, parsley leaves, parsley roots, peppercorns, and water. Boil until the fish falls apart.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve to pulp the fish.

Cook and serve

  1. In a separate pot, combine the pulped fish, the boiling liquid, and additional fish. Simmer until cooked through.

  2. Serve in a deep dish with slices of bread and butter on the side.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flounders
Provide the main fish flavor and body that gives the soup its substance.
Parsley roots
Add aromatic flavor to the broth as it simmers with the fish.
Parsley leaves
Contribute fresh herbal aroma to the broth.
Peppercorns
Add mild, warm pungency that rounds out the broth's flavor.
Bread
Soaks up the broth and adds body when served alongside the soup.

The step that matters

Pulping the fish through a sieve. Straining after the fish falls apart separates the flesh from bones and skin. Pressing it through leaves a smooth, cohesive body in the broth, so bones and fragments are not left in the soup.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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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