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Water Souchy

A fish stew made with parsley roots, lemon juice, and broth, served hot with brown bread and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Water Souchy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Stew parsley roots for about an hour to make a strong broth, then strain.

Cook the fish

  1. Put fish in a clean stewpan with the broth and parsley roots.

  2. Clear off the scum as it rises, and stew the fish for 10 to 12 minutes without breaking it.

  3. Add minced parsley 2 minutes before serving.

  4. Add the juice of half a lemon.

Serve

  1. Carefully remove the fish with a slotted spoon and place it in a deep dish.

  2. Pour the broth over the fish, removing only the parsley roots; serve very hot.

  3. Serve with neatly cut slices of brown bread and butter.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the stew and becomes tender when gently simmered.
Parsley roots
Flavour the broth strongly during the long stewing, giving it its character.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the broth and fish.
Minced parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma when added just before serving.

The step that matters

Stew the fish gently without breaking it. Fish proteins set and firm with heat and break apart when the liquid boils hard or is stirred vigorously. A gentle simmer keeps the pieces whole and tender, and skimming the scum keeps the broth clear.

“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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