Skip to main content
Soup

Broth, Pish

A fish broth made with fish bones, tripes, crayfish tails, herbs, onions, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsnip and sorrel share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Broth, Pish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Set water over the fire in a kettle, based on the quantity of broth desired.

  2. Add the roots of parsley, parsnip, whole onions, sweet herbs, parsley, sorrel, and butter.

  3. Season well, then add the bones and carcasses of the fish used for farces, tripes, and pounded tails of crayfish.

  4. Add four or five tablespoons of onion juice, season well, and boil.

Strain and keep hot

  1. Strain through a sieve, return to the kettle, and keep hot to simmer soups and boil fish.

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. Parsnip + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + sorreltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Parsnip + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Bones and carcasses of fish
Release gelatin and savoury flavour into the water, giving the broth body and depth.
Butter
Adds fat that carries aroma and gives the broth a rounder mouthfeel.
Sorrel
Contributes a sharp, acidic note that brightens the broth.
Whole onions
Provide sweetness and aroma as they cook into the liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, parsnip, sorrel, butter, fish, crayfish):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, parsnip, sorrel, butter, fish, crayfish. 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.

More fish broth recipes

Soup 3 See all 23 →

You might also like

Indian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and SpinachIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and Spinach448 recipesClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd SoupClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd Soup65 recipesMock Bisque SoupMock Bisque Soup51 recipesCream of Asparagus SoupCream of Asparagus Soup42 recipes