Skip to main content
Main

Broths and Soups

A fish broth made with cod or other fish, onions, tomatoes, and sherry, served over bread slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Olive and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Broths and Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the fish into pieces of 2 to 4 ounces each.

  2. Heat the olive oil in a large shallow stew-pan.

  3. Fry the onions until light brown.

Make the broth

  1. Add the fish and enough warm water to cover them.

  2. Stir in the salt, pepper, bay leaf, lemon, tomatoes, sherry, peppercorns, and garlic.

  3. Bring to a boil over high heat.

  4. Cook for 12 minutes, reducing the liquid to one-third.

  5. Add the chopped parsley and boil for 1 more minute.

Serve

  1. Serve over slices of bread.

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. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Provides the main flavor and body of the broth as it simmers.
Onions
Browning in oil builds sweetness and savory depth into the broth.
Olive oil
Carries heat evenly and helps the onions brown and release flavor.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture that balance the richness of the fish.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic flavor as it reduces with the liquid.

The step that matters

Reducing the liquid to one-third. Reduction concentrates flavor, but boiling too hard or too long can make the broth bitter or overly salty. Watch the volume and stop once it is reduced as the record states.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, olive, pepper, lemon, tomato, sherry, clove):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, olive, pepper, lemon, tomato, sherry, 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.

More fish broth recipes

Soup 3 See all 23 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes