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Fish Soups

A fish soup made with prawns, trout quenelles, rice, and a buttery broth.

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, combine diced carrots, celery, parsley roots, butter, thyme, black pepper, and salt, and cook over medium heat until lightly colored.

  2. Add the remaining prawns and the bodies of prawns without tails, pour in the Sauternes wine, and boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in the boiled rice and veal consomme and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture through a sieve, reserving the broth in a basin.

  5. In a mortar, pound the prawns, rice, and vegetables together.

  6. Dilute the pounded mixture with the reserved broth and rub through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a soup pot and keep cool until dinner time.

  2. Before serving, heat the soup without boiling.

  3. Mix in lobster coral butter, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.

  4. Pour the soup into a tureen with the prawns' tails and trout quenelles, 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

Prawns
Give the soup its main shellfish flavor and, once pounded, body and color.
Rice
Thickens the pounded soup, giving it a smoother, fuller texture.
Veal consomme
Provides the savory meat-based broth that forms the soup's liquid base.
Butter
Carries flavor from the vegetables and aromatics and adds richness to the soup.
Sauternes wine
Adds aromatic acidity and sweetness that deepen the flavor of the shellfish.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color to the flavor base as they cook gently in butter.

The step that matters

Heat the soup without boiling. Boiling a smooth, emulsified soup with butter can break the emulsion and make it grainy or greasy, and can toughen the delicate trout quenelles.

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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