Skip to main content
Main

Mussel Soup

A mussel soup made with mussels, flour, butter, parsley, sweet herbs, and rich gravy, served hot with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mussel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mussels

  1. Boil the mussels in a saucepan until they open.

  2. Remove the mussels from their shells and separate any seaweed.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, combine the mussels, flour, butter, parsley, and sweet herbs.

  2. Add the rich gravy and simmer until reduced to just over half.

  3. Serve hot with toasted bread pieces.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mussels
Provide the main body and briny seafood flavor of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the soup has body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor through the soup.
Rich gravy
Forms the liquid base, which reduces to concentrate its flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer until reduced to just over half. Reducing concentrates the gravy's flavor and thickens the soup. Simmering too hard or too long can over-salt or scorch the base, so watch it closely and stop when the volume is just over half.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter):

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes