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Fish Soup

A fish soup made with whiting or cod, stock, milk, carrot, herbs, mace, butter, flour, egg yolks, cream, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Cut the fish into pieces.

  2. Combine the fish, stock or water, milk, carrot, herbs, and mace in a saucepan.

  3. Simmer for 20 minutes.

  4. Strain the liquid into a separate bowl.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in the saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the strained stock.

  4. Stir until it boils.

  5. Beat the egg yolks and cream together.

  6. Strain the mixture into the saucepan.

  7. Cook for 1 minute without boiling.

  8. Season.

  9. Add the lemon juice 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Whiting + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Whiting or cod
Provides the main body of the soup, flavouring the liquid as it poaches.
Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavour when melted with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the strained stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the sauce when gently heated, adding richness and smoothness.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Cook the egg yolk mixture without boiling. Egg yolks thicken when heated but curdle if they get too hot. Keeping the sauce just below boiling, after straining, gives a smooth, thickened result.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, carrot, milk, butter, flour, egg, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, carrot, milk, butter, flour, egg, 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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