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Fish Soup E-mai Gre

A fish soup made with dace or roach, carrots, lettuces, leeks, onions, sorrel, butter, pepper, salt, cloves, and a French roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and sorrel work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and 25 recipes mention both. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and wash the fish thoroughly.

Make the broth

  1. Stew the fish with large carrots, half the number of lettuces, a handful of leeks, 4 onions, and a handful of sorrel in enough water to cover them until everything is soft.

  2. Strain the mixture through a coarse cloth.

  3. Boil the liquid, covered, for 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Prepare some of the previously mentioned vegetables, cut them small, and sauté them in butter.

  2. Simmer the sautéed vegetables in the soup for 1 hour.

  3. Season with pepper, salt, and a few cloves.

  4. Soak a rasped French roll in the broth before serving.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Fish + sorreltop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  2. Lettuce + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Leek + sorreltop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together112 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together217 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuces
Adds body and a mild, savoury vegetable flavour to the broth.
Butter
Carries flavour and browns the vegetables before they join the soup.
French roll
Soaks up the broth and turns the soup into a thicker, bread-based dish.
Sorrel
Contributes a sharp, acidic note that brightens the broth.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, carrot, lettuce, leek, sorrel, butter, pepper):

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Turnipbetter flavor fit
  3. Spinachbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, carrot, lettuce, leek, sorrel, butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

More fish soup recipes

White 9Lake and Pond 6Water Soucy 6Brown 4Clear 3Russian 3 See all 129 →

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