Name: Water Souchy
Ingredients: fish; parsley roots; water; coarse sea salt; cayenne pepper; juice of ½ lemon; slices of brown or white bread; butter

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Water Souchy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

Remove all bones from the fish and simmer them with the inferior portions in water for about 1 hour to make a strong broth.
Strain the broth through a sieve and use it instead of water for the soucy.

Season and serve

Carefully lift out the fish with a slotted spoon, along with the parsley roots.
Pour the boiling liquid over the fish, leaving out the peppercorns.
Add coarse sea salt, parsley, and a little cayenne pepper to the broth.
Add the juice of ½ lemon to the stew before serving.
Serve in a deep dish with slices of brown or white bread and butter on the side.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,668 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish: Forms the body of the soup and releases flavour into the broth as it simmers.
Parsley roots: Add earthy, aromatic flavour to the broth while it cooks.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury broth.
Butter: Adds richness and fat to the bread served alongside the soup.

“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.