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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: Fish and oyster match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 488 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: fish, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Fish + oystertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together488 recipes

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

  2. Salmon + oystertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together671 recipes

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

  3. Fish + anchovytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together615 recipes

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

  4. Oyster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together601 recipes

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

  5. Fish + salmontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,058 recipes

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

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.

Flavor stand-ins for 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. Capersbetter flavor fit
  2. Celeryabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Turmericabout as good a flavor fit

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. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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