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Fish Soup a LA Parisienne

A French fish soup made with whiting, soles, eel, crayfish, mushrooms, and a wine-based broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Fish Soup a LA Parisienne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Make forcemeat balls with the flesh of a large whiting.

  2. Trim the fillets of two soles and an eel into scallops, then sprinkle the scallops with salt.

Make the essence

  1. Prepare an essence with the usual roots, herbs, and spices.

  2. Add the fish trimmings to the essence.

  3. Pour in ½ bottle of Chablis or Graves wine and 2 tablespoons of fish broth.

  4. Boil for nearly an hour.

  5. Strain the mixture into a buttered sauté pan with the scallops of fish.

  6. Boil for 10 minutes.

Cook and assemble

  1. Remove the sole fillets and place them in a tureen.

  2. Cook the eel for 5 minutes longer.

  3. Add the eel to the sole fillets along with the forcemeat, crayfish tails, and mushrooms.

  4. Strain the cooking liquor.

  5. Add it to some prepared broth.

  6. Boil for a few minutes.

  7. Skim off any film.

  8. Add blanched chervil.

  9. 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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Wine + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  3. Whiting + crayfishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Crayfish + cherviltop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Butter + crayfishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Whiting
Its flesh forms the forcemeat balls, giving a light, tender, delicate texture to the soup.
Soles
Their delicate fillets hold their shape and flavour gently in the soup.
Eel
Its firm, rich flesh adds body and substance to the fish pieces.
Chablis or graves wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the essence as it reduces.

The step that matters

Boil the essence for nearly an hour. Long simmering extracts flavour and gelatine from the bones and trimmings; boiling too hard can cloud the broth and break the delicate fish.

Swap the chervil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, fish, wine, butter, crayfish, mushroom):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Chervilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, fish, wine, butter, crayfish, mushroom. 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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