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Cheap Fish Soups

A simple soup made by simmering fish with vegetables and herbs, optionally thickened with rice or rice flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Crab and anchovy share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 79 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Cheap Fish Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the skin from the fish and any oily particles on the surface.

  2. Slice the fish into thick cutlets and place in a pot with vegetables and herbs.

Make the soup

  1. Cover with water and simmer until the fish is cooked.

  2. Strain the soup and allow it to settle.

  3. Reheat the strained soup and add rice and minced parsley, or thicken with rice flour, or serve clear.

  4. For added flavor, include cold fish, crab, lobster, or oysters, simmering gently.

  5. Add anchovy or fish sauce if desired.

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. Crab + anchovytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together79 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Salmon + oystertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together672 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Provides the main body and flavor of the soup as it simmers in water.
Rice flour
Thickens the strained soup, giving it a fuller body if the cook chooses to thicken it.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, rice, flour, salmon, crab, oyster, anchovy):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, rice, flour, salmon, crab, oyster, anchovy. 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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