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Fish Curry Soup

A soup of fried onions, tomatoes, herbs, curry powder, flour, veal stock, and fish, served with bread crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and winter savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 780 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Fish Curry Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a saucepan, combine the fried onions, sliced tomatoes, parsley, thyme, bay leaves, winter savory, Chablis, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add the curry powder and flour mixed with cold veal stock.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil and let it cook for 30 minutes.

Add the fish and serve

  1. Cut the fish into pieces or slices and add it to the soup.

  2. Once the fish is cooked, remove the bunch of herbs.

  3. Serve the soup with crusts of bread or toast.

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. Thyme + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together780 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together863 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Fried until light brown, they add sweetness and savoury depth to the soup base.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, helping to balance the rich veal stock and curry.
Flour
Thickens the cold veal stock as it cooks, giving the soup a fuller body.
Curry powder
Provides the main spice aroma and flavour of the soup.
Veal stock
Forms the liquid base, adding savoury body and richness.
Fish
Adds protein and delicate flavour; cooks gently in the hot soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and cold stock to the pan. Flour mixed with cold liquid disperses evenly; added directly to hot liquid it forms lumps. Whisking it smooth first gives the soup an even, silky thickness.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, parsley, thyme, winter savory, pepper, flour, veal):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, parsley, thyme, winter savory, pepper, flour, veal. 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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