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Water Souchy

A fish stew made with perch or flounder simmered in fish liquor with parsley, horseradish, shalot wine, cayenne sauce, walnut ketchup, served with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Water Souchy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew the fish slowly in enough fish liquor to cover them, along with the parsley, horseradish, and sauces.

  2. Once the fish are cooked, place them in a deep dish with sippets of toast and a teaspoon of chopped parsley.

  3. Strain the cooking liquor over the fish and serve, adding more fish liquor if needed to cover the 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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Parsley + radishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together120 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

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

  5. Radish + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together46 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Perch or flounders
The main protein, which cooks gently in the liquor until tender and flaky.
Fish liquor
Cooking liquid that gently poaches the fish and becomes the flavourful sauce served over it.
Parsley plants
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the stewing liquid and the finished dish.
Horse-radish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that mellows as the stew cooks.
Walnut ketchup
Contributes deep, savoury, slightly tangy flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew the fish slowly. Fish is delicate and its proteins set and toughen quickly at high heat. Gentle, slow simmering in the liquor keeps the flesh tender and moist and stops it breaking apart.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, parsley, horse, radish, wine, sauce, ketchup):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Sesamefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, parsley, horse, radish, wine, sauce, ketchup. 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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