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Fish Soup

A clear soup made from white fish, vegetables, herbs, and seasonings, finished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Skin and bone the fish, reserving the best parts.

  2. In a pot, combine the fish scraps, 2 quarts of water, vegetables, and herbs.

  3. Boil for 1 hour, then strain the stock.

  4. Wash out the pot and return the stock to it.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the reserved fish cut into small pieces, butter, vinegar, ketchup, and seasoning.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes, then add parsley and serve.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

White fish
Provides the main body and flavor of the soup, and the reserved pieces cook through in the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounder mouthfeel to the finished broth.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the fish broth.
Ketchup
Adds a small amount of sweetness and tomato acidity to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil for 1 hour, then strain the stock. A long, steady simmer extracts flavor and gelatin from the fish scraps and vegetables, while straining removes solids so the broth stays clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, butter, ketchup):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, butter, 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.

More fish soup recipes

White 9Lake and Pond 6Water Soucy 6Brown 4Clear 3Russian 3 See all 129 →

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