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Cheap Fish Soups

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Salmon and oyster work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 672 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Cheap Fish Soups

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the skin from the conger eel and slice it into thick cutlets.

  2. Stew the fish with vegetables and herbs in water until cooked.

  3. Strain the soup and let it settle, then reheat it.

  4. Add rice and minced parsley, or thicken with rice flour, or serve clear.

  5. For added flavor, include cold fish, crab, lobster, or oysters after simmering.

  6. Optionally, add anchovy sauce, prawns, or shrimps for extra taste.

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

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

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

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

  3. Scallop + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

  5. Fish + salmontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,078 recipes

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

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, rice, flour, salmon, scallop, crab, oyster):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, rice, flour, salmon, scallop, crab, oyster. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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