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Fish Soup

A clear soup made with white fish, vegetables, herbs, and a flour‑milk roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Chop and wash the fish, bones, and fins.

  2. Place them in a saucepan with cold water and salt.

  3. Bring to a boil, skimming well.

Simmer the stock

  1. Add the washed and chopped vegetables, cloves, mace, and herbs.

  2. Simmer gently for 1.5 hours.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix flour with ½ cup of milk to form a smooth paste.

  2. Stir the paste into the soup and bring to a boil to cook the flour.

  3. Add the remaining milk and butter, and boil for another 10 minutes.

  4. Strain into a soup tureen, adding chopped parsley and shredded cooked carrot.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Leek + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Bones and flesh release flavour and body into the cold-water stock during slow simmering.
Flour
Starch thickens the soup and gives it a smooth, body-rich texture when boiled.
Butter
Adds fat that carries aroma and gives the finished soup a rounder, richer mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the soup's flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour paste into the soup. Flour must be smoothed into a paste before adding, and the soup then brought to a boil, so the starch swells evenly and cooks out without lumps or a raw floury taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, leek, carrot, parsley, thyme, celery, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, leek, carrot, parsley, thyme, celery, clove. 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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