Skip to main content
Main

Ray Soup

A soup made from ray fish, vermicelli, cream, egg yolk, and served with a trench roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Fish and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,782 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ray Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the ray in fish stock until tender.

  2. Strain the liquid through a sieve.

  3. Return the liquid to the saucepan and bring it to a boil.

  4. Add the vermicelli and cook until tender.

  5. Remove from heat for a minute.

  6. Stir in the cream beaten with the egg yolk.

  7. Simmer for a few minutes without boiling.

Serve

  1. Heat the trench roll in the oven.

  2. Soak the trench roll in some soup until moist.

  3. Place the trench roll in a tureen.

  4. Pour the soup over it 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. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Fish + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together937 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Ray
Provides the main body and flavour of the soup once cooked until tender.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the soup.
Egg yolk
Thickens the cream mixture and gives the soup a silkier body.
Vermicelli
Adds starchy pasta strands that soften in the soup and give it body.
Trench roll
Soaked in soup until moist, it becomes the base that the soup is poured over.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream beaten with the egg yolk. Egg yolk can curdle or scramble if the soup is too hot, so it should be removed from heat first and then gently simmered without boiling to keep it smooth.

“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.

You might also like

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes