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Fish Soup

A clear fish soup made with plaice, brill, or skate, onions, parsley, butter, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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

Prepare

  1. Clean, skin, and cut the fish into small fillets.

Make the stock

  1. Boil the fish head, skin, and bones with the onions and parsley in 2 quarts of water until reduced to 1 quart.

  2. Skim and strain the stock.

Finish and serve

  1. Brown the butter and add it to the stock to color and thicken.

  2. Add the fish fillets and boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Season to taste with salt, pepper, catsup, and sherry, then 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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish (in the method)
Provides the main body of the soup and flakes into tender pieces as it cooks.
Butter
Browned butter adds a nutty aroma and colour and helps thicken the stock.
Onions
Flavour the stock as they simmer with the fish bones and head.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a mellow aroma to finish the soup.

The step that matters

Browning the butter. Butter goes from golden to burnt quickly, and burnt milk solids turn bitter and dark. Stop the browning when it smells nutty and the butter is golden, then stir it into the hot stock so it thickens and colours the soup evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, butter, pepper, sherry. 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.

More fish soup recipes

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