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Fish Soups

A fish soup made with prawns, trout quenelles, rice, veal consommé, and seasoned with butter, wine, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fish Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a stewpan, melt butter and add diced carrots, celery, parsley roots, thyme, pepper, and salt. Fry until light in color.

  2. Add remaining prawns and the bodies of prawns. Pour in Sauterne wine and boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in boiled rice and veal consommé. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture into a basin, reserving the broth.

Finish the soup

  1. Pound the prawns, rice, and vegetables in a mortar. Dilute with reserved broth and rub through a fine sieve.

  2. Put the puree in a soup pot and keep cool until ready to serve.

  3. Before serving, heat the soup without boiling. Mix in lobster coral butter, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.

  4. Pour the soup into a tureen with prawns' tails and quenelles of trout, then 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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Thickens the puree, giving the soup body and a smooth, velvety texture after pounding and sieving.
Butter
Carries the aromatics in the first frying and adds richness and flavor to the soup.
Veal consommé
Provides the main liquid and savory meaty backbone of the soup.
Prawns
Give the soup its main shellfish flavor, especially from the bodies pounded into the puree.
Sauterne wine
Adds sweetness and aromatic acidity as it boils down with the prawns.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich shellfish and butter flavors.

The step that matters

Heat the soup without boiling. Boiling after the lobster coral butter is added can cause the butter emulsion to split and dull the flavor, and can toughen the delicate trout quenelles when they are added.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsley, butter, thyme, pepper, wine, rice):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsley, butter, thyme, pepper, wine, rice. 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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