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Soup À LA Mer

A fish soup made with whiting or flounder, vegetables, stock, and cream, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 29,030 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: egg yolk

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and cut the fish into pieces.

  2. Combine the fish, stock, and water in a soup pot.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add the onion, parsley root, tomatoes, celery, garlic, lettuce, sorrel, mace, and bay leaves.

  2. Boil the soup for 1.5 hours.

  3. Strain the soup and return it to a clean saucepan.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix the flour and butter together.

  2. Add the flour and butter mixture to the soup.

  3. Boil the soup for 5 minutes.

  4. Mix the egg yolks and cream in a bowl.

  5. Pour some hot soup into the egg yolk mixture and stir.

  6. Pour the mixture back into the soup pot.

  7. Stir the soup well.

  8. Serve with small cubes of fried bread.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Lettuce + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,805 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Tomato + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,375 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
Breaks into tender flakes and gives the soup its main body and savory flavor.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a smoother, heavier texture.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the soup for thickening.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished soup.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and fresh flavor that balance the rich fish stock.

The step that matters

Pour some hot soup into the egg yolk mixture and stir. Adding hot liquid gradually tempers the yolks so they warm slowly instead of scrambling. Once they are combined, the soup should not return to a rolling boil, or the yolks may curdle.

Flavor stand-ins for the sorrel

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, onion, tomato, celery, garlic, parsley, lettuce):

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  3. Cuminbetter flavor fit
  4. Sorrelthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, onion, tomato, celery, garlic, parsley, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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