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Soup

Ray or Skate Soup

A fish soup made with ray or skate, vermicelli, cream, egg yolks, and a French roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and fish are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,782 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ray or Skate Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the vermicelli in the fish stock shortly before serving.

  2. Beat the cream with the egg yolks in a bowl until well combined.

  3. Stir the cream mixture into the stock off the heat.

  4. Heat the French roll in a Dutch oven.

  5. Soak the roll in the soup for one hour before serving.

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. Egg + fishtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Cream + fishtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together937 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture and enrich the soup with richness and body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the soup.
Vermicelli
Adds thin noodle strands that give the soup body and something to bite.

The step that matters

Stir the cream mixture into the stock off the heat. Egg yolks thicken when heated, so adding them to hot stock over direct heat can scramble them. Removing the pan from the heat first lets them thicken the soup gently and smoothly.

“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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