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Fish Soup Superbe

A fish soup made with stock, fish cutlets, herbs, garlic, onions, carrots, turnips, butter, wine, water, lemon, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Fish Soup Superbe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Make stock from any fish.

Make the soup

  1. Stew fish cutlets with chopped herbs, garlic, onions, carrots, and turnips in butter for a few minutes.

  2. Add wine, water, and lemon juice; simmer for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture and cool it.

  4. Add fish cutlets and simmer gently until reduced.

  5. Combine with the original stock.

  6. Thicken with cream.

  7. Serve in a tureen.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + turniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish cutlets
Provide the main fish flavour and body as they cook down into the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture that thickens the soup.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the broth.
Onions
Build a sweet, savoury base of flavour when stewed in butter.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and body to the base.

The step that matters

Add fish cutlets and simmer gently until reduced. Simmering gently keeps the fish tender and clear-tasting, while a vigorous boil can break it apart and make the soup cloudy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, garlic, onion, carrot, turnip, butter, white wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, garlic, onion, carrot, turnip, butter, white wine. 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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