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White Fish Soup

A soup made from haddock, cream, milk, and thickened with flour, served with fish balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Haddock and cream work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 181 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

White Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cut the haddocks into pieces and boil them in 1 gallon of water until the flesh separates from the bones.

Make the fish balls

  1. Remove some nice pieces of fish, mince them, and mix with egg and bread crumbs to form small balls.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup, then add ½ pint of cream and 1 pint of milk.

  2. Bring the soup to a boil, season with salt, and thicken with a little flour.

  3. Serve the soup with the fish balls added.

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. Haddock + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together181 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Haddocks
Provide the flaky fish flesh and the flavour that builds the broth.
Egg
Binds the minced fish so the balls hold their shape.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the fish balls a softer, more cohesive texture.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the soup a smoother mouthfeel.
Milk
Dilutes and mellows the broth while adding a gentle sweetness and body.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a fuller body.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour while boiling. Flour must be stirred in so it disperses evenly; added to a cold or unstirred liquid it clumps. Starch swells and thickens only once the liquid is hot, so the soup needs to be brought to a boil after the flour goes in.

“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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