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Potage Dupoise, or Mussel Soup

A creamy mussel soup made with fish stock, mussels, butter, flour, parsley, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Potage Dupoise, or Mussel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the mussels as for dressed mussels.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan, then add the flour and mix well.

  2. Pour in the fish stock and the liquor from the mussels, then add the parsley stalks.

  3. Let it boil and skim well, then strain the mixture.

  4. Add the cream and the mussels, then reheat without boiling and 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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the soup and carries flavour, giving body with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied soup when cooked with the butter.
Fish stock
Forms the liquid base, supplying the main savoury flavour of the soup.
Mussels
Provide the main seafood flavour and texture, with their liquor adding brininess.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Reheat without boiling. Once cream is added, boiling can cause it to separate or curdle and make the soup grainy. Gentle heating keeps it smooth and the mussels tender.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, flour, sugar, pepper, lemon, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour, sugar, pepper, lemon, cream. 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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