Skip to main content
Main

Fish Soups

A fish soup made with prawns, trout quenelles, and lobster coral butter, simmered with vegetables and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare

  1. Combine diced carrots, celery, parsley roots, butter, thyme, pepper, and salt in a stewpan.

  2. Fry until lightly colored.

  3. Add remaining prawns and the bodies of prawns.

  4. Pour in Sauterne wine and boil for 10 minutes.

  5. Stir in boiled rice and consomme.

  6. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Strain and purée

  1. Strain the mixture, reserving the broth in a basin.

  2. Pound the prawns, rice, and vegetables together.

  3. Dilute with reserved broth and strain through a fine sieve.

  4. Keep the puree in a cool place until dinner.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat without boiling.

  2. Finish by mixing in lobster coral butter, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. 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

Prawns
Provide the main shellfish flavor and body once pounded into the soup.
Rice
Pounded with the vegetables and prawns, its starch thickens the soup and gives it body.
Consomme of veal
Forms the savory base of the soup and adds body from its gelatin.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor through the vegetables and the finished soup.
Sauterne wine
Boiled with the shellfish, it adds aromatic sweetness and a light fruity note.
Lemon juice
Adds brightness and acidity that balances the richness of the butter and broth.

The step that matters

Heat without boiling. Once butter and coral butter are added, boiling can split the emulsion, leaving the soup greasy and dulling its delicate shellfish flavor.

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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes