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White Fish Soup

A soup made from haddock, water, cream, milk, salt, flour, bread crumbs, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Haddock and cream work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 181 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

White Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut the haddocks into pieces.

  2. Boil them in 1 gallon of water until the flesh separates from the bones.

  3. Remove some nice parts of the fish.

Make the fish balls

  1. Mince them and mix with egg and bread crumbs to form little balls.

Finish the soup

  1. Strain the soup.

  2. Add ½ pint of cream and 1 pint of milk.

  3. Bring the soup to a boil.

  4. Add salt to taste.

  5. Thicken the soup with a little flour.

  6. Serve with the fish balls.

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. Haddock + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together181 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Haddock
Provides the main flavour and body of the soup as it cooks down into the broth.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Milk
Dilutes and mellows the broth while adding creaminess and gentle sweetness.
Egg
Binds the minced fish so the balls hold their shape while cooking.
Flour
Thickens the soup by swelling in the hot liquid to give it body.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with flour. Flour must be stirred in smoothly and kept at a simmer so it hydrates fully; added lumpy or to a cold liquid, it clumps and leaves a pasty texture.

“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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