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Fish Stock

A stock made from fish water, salt, egg whites, crushed shells, seasoning, and vegetables, clarified by simmering.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,782 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fish Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Save the water used to boil fish for stock.

  2. Add a little coarse sea salt to the boiling water to harden the fish.

  3. After boiling, let the broth cool to form a jelly.

Clarify the stock

  1. For each quart of jellied stock, beat the whites of 2 eggs with the crushed eggshells.

  2. Heat the stock until steaming but not boiling.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the hot stock and bring to a boil.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

  5. Strain the stock through a fine flannel bag until clear.

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. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg whites bind to impurities and rise with them, collecting particles so the stock can clear.
Fish
Fish, boiled to make the water, provides the body and flavour of the stock.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the hot stock. Egg whites must be mixed in evenly while the stock is hot but not boiling. Stirring them in lets the whites spread and then coagulate as the stock heats, trapping cloudy particles. If the stock is boiled too hard or the whites are not dispersed, the clarifying matrix forms unevenly and the stock stays cloudy.

“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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