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Salmon Soup

A soup of salmon, peas, lettuce, sorrel, and fish stock, finished with fried salmon fillets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 317 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salmon Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Combine fish stock, green peas, shredded lettuce, and sorrel in a stewpan.

  2. Stew for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the soup.

  4. Rub the peas through a tamis.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the boiled peas to the soup and set it on the fire.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Fry the salmon fillets in butter until cooked.

  4. Add the cooked salmon fillets and the butter used for frying to the soup.

  5. Let the soup simmer for 15 minutes before serving.

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. Lettuce + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Peas + sorreltop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Sorrel + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together419 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon fillets
Provides the main protein and rich flavor, and flakes into the finished soup.
Fish stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the whole soup.
Green peas
Thicken the soup and add body and sweet, fresh flavor when rubbed through a tamis.
Lettuce
Adds gentle vegetable sweetness and softens into the soup during stewing.
Sorrel
Adds a sharp, acidic, lemony note that brightens the rich fish and peas.
Butter
Browns the salmon in the pan and adds richness carried into the finished soup.

The step that matters

Rub the peas through a tamis. Pressing the peas through a fine sieve breaks down their cell walls and separates the pulp from the skins, giving a smooth, silky texture. Skipping this leaves the soup grainy.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, fish, lettuce, sorrel, pepper, butter):

  1. Lentilsfits about as well
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Peasthe original
  4. Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, fish, lettuce, sorrel, 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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