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Fish Soups

A fish soup made with prawns, trout quenelles, rice, and a buttery broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the diced carrots, celery, parsley roots, thyme, minionette pepper, and coarse sea salt; fry until lightly colored.

  3. Add the remaining prawns and the bodies from which the tails have been removed.

  4. Pour in the Sauternes wine and boil for 10 minutes.

  5. Stir in the boiled rice and veal consomme.

  6. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  7. Strain the mixture into a basin, reserving the broth.

Finish the soup

  1. Pound the prawns, rice, and vegetables together in a mortar.

  2. Dilute with the reserved broth and rub through a fine sieve.

  3. Heat the puree in a soup pot without boiling.

  4. Mix in the lobster coral butter, soluble cayenne pepper, and juice of ½ lemon.

  5. Pour the soup into a tureen with the prawns' tails and trout quenelles.

  6. Serve hot.

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

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

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften and release flavor.
Butter
Carries flavor and gives the broth a rounded, rich mouthfeel.
Rice
Thickens the soup when pounded and rubbed through, giving it a smooth body.
Veal consommé
Forms the liquid base, adding savory depth to the soup.
Sauternes wine
Adds aromatic sweetness and acidity to the broth during boiling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the finished soup.

The step that matters

Heat the puree without boiling. Boiling the puree can cause it to separate and turn grainy or dull, and it can dull the delicate flavors of the seafood. Gentle heating keeps the texture smooth and the flavor fresh.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsley, butter, thyme, pepper, wine, rice):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsley, butter, thyme, pepper, wine, rice. 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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