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Fish Soup

A light haddock soup thickened with rice flour, flavored with lemon, parsley, cayenne pepper, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the soup

  1. Heat the fish stock in a saucepan until hot.

  2. Add the pieces of fish and boil for three minutes, skimming off any scum.

  3. Mix the rice flour with the milk, then add this mixture and the butter to the stock, stirring until boiling.

  4. Season with cayenne pepper and salt to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in the lemon juice and parsley.

  2. For a richer soup, heat ½ cup cream with the yolks of two eggs, then pour the boiling soup over this mixture while stirring.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

  5. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Haddock
Forms the main body of the soup, providing flaky pieces of fish as the substance of the dish.
Rice flour
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the soup body and a smoother texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the flavour of the stock.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the mouthfeel and rounds out the flavour of the soup.
Fish stock
Serves as the liquid base that carries the main flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and milk mixture to the stock. Rice flour can clump if added without stirring. Stirring while the mixture goes in and heats to boiling disperses the starch evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly rather than lumpy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, rice, flour, milk, haddock, pepper, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, rice, flour, milk, haddock, pepper, 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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