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A Swedish Fish-Soup

A soup of fish with beet, onions, leeks, parsley root, and cabbage, served with fried fish pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and cabbage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 214 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

A Swedish Fish-Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Skin and bone the fish.

  2. Boil the heads and bones in water with salt and dried mushrooms for 30 minutes.

Fry the fish

  1. Egg and crumb the fish pieces.

  2. Fry the fish pieces in boiling lard until golden brown.

  3. Drain the fried fish on brown paper.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Pare the beet, onions, leeks, and parsley root.

  2. Chop them finely.

  3. Cook the chopped vegetables separately in salted water for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Strain the fish broth over the cooked vegetables.

  2. Place the fried fish in a tureen.

  3. Pour the broth and vegetables over them.

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. Leek + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  3. Leek + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together759 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Onion + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Parsley + cabbagetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together660 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

Pan-fish
Provides the main protein, which is fried in a crumb coating and served in the soup.
Lard
Fries the coated fish, giving it a crisp, golden-brown crust.
Dried mushrooms
Adds deep, savoury aroma to the broth made from the fish heads and bones.
Red beet
Contributes colour and earthy sweetness to the soup.
Leeks
Add mild onion flavour and soft body to the vegetable element.

The step that matters

Fry the fish pieces in boiling lard until golden brown. The lard must be hot enough to set the egg and crumb coating quickly. If the fat is too cool, the coating absorbs grease and turns soggy instead of crisp.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, mushroom, onion, leek, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, mushroom, onion, leek, parsley. 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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