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Fish Soup

A soup made by boiling fish with celery, parsley, onions, bay leaf, cloves, then adding water, cream, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Clean and trim the fish.

  2. Boil the fish with celery, parsley, onions, bay leaf, and cloves in a covered saucepan.

  3. After one hour, add enough water to make the soup.

  4. Strain the soup and stir in the cream.

  5. Season with salt and white pepper.

Serve

  1. Fry the eggs in butter, one for each person.

  2. Pour the soup over the fried eggs in a tureen and serve with toasted 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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Gives the soup its main flavour as it simmers into the broth.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow body to the strained soup.
Eggs
Are fried and set in the bowl, adding richness and substance to each serving.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury flavour to the broth as it boils with the fish.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth as they cook.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, celery, parsley, onion, clove, cream, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, celery, parsley, onion, clove, cream, butter. 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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