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Skate Soup

A soup made from skate marinated in vinegar, salt, pepper, onion, parsley, lemon juice, then fried and served.

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 ↓

Skate Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the skate and place it in a dish.

  2. Cover the skate with vinegar.

  3. Add salt, pepper, onion, parsley, and lemon juice to the skate.

  4. Let the skate marinate for 1.5 hours.

  5. Drain the skate well.

Fry and serve

  1. Coat the skate with flour, or dip it in beaten egg and breadcrumbs.

  2. Fry the skate in hot oil until nicely browned.

  3. Serve with or without sauce.

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

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Skate
Is the main protein; its firm flesh holds up to marinating and frying.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade gently firms and seasons the fish before cooking.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the surface brown and crisp when fried.
Egg
Binds the breadcrumb coating so it adheres to the fish while frying.

The step that matters

Drain the skate well before coating. Excess marinade left on the surface will make the coating soggy and steam the fish instead of letting it brown in hot oil.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, parsley, lemon, flour, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, parsley, lemon, flour, egg. 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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