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Stock for Brown or White Fish-soups

A fish stock made from skate, flounders, eels, and aromatics, simmered for 1.5 hours.

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 Brown or White Fish-soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Cover the fish with water and season with 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 soup variation

  1. For brown soup, first fry the fish in butter until brown, then follow 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, giving the stock a fuller, richer mouthfeel.
Eels
Add richness and body from their fat and gelatin as they simmer.
Flounders
Contribute mild, sweet fish flavor to the stock.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma that rounds out the stock.
Celery
Adds aromatic, herbal background flavor to the stock.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle and covered. A rolling boil emulsifies fat into the liquid and clouds the stock, while a gentle, covered simmer extracts flavor and gelatin cleanly and keeps the broth clear.

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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