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Stock for White or Brown Fish Soups

A stock made from skate, flounder, and eel with herbs, used for white or brown fish soups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stock for White or Brown Fish Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the skate, flounders, and eels well, then cut them into pieces.

  2. Cover the fish with water in a pot.

  3. Add mace, pepper, salt, onion, celery, parsley roots, and sweet herbs.

Simmer and strain

  1. Simmer for 1.5 hours, closely covered.

  2. Strain the stock for use.

Brown variant

  1. For brown soup, fry the fish in butter until brown before following the above steps.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Skate
Provides body and gelatin that give the stock a fuller mouthfeel as it simmers.
Flounders
Add mild flavour and gelatin-rich flesh that helps the stock taste rounded.
Eels
Contribute gelatin and richness, thickening the stock slightly as they break down.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens in the liquid.
Celery
Adds a fresh, vegetal aroma that builds the stock's background flavour.

The step that matters

Keeping the pot closely covered while simmering. A gentle simmer with the lid mostly closed limits evaporation and keeps the broth clear and well flavoured. Boiling hard would emulsify fat and cloud the stock.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper, onion, clove, celery, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, onion, clove, celery, parsley. 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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