Skip to main content
Main

Haddock Soup

A hearty soup made with haddock fillets, beef stock, vegetables, herbs, Madeira wine, and oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Haddock Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Fillet the haddocks and set the fillets aside.

  2. Combine the bones with the beef and fish bones to make a stock.

  3. Add the onions, carrot, turnip, and allspice to the stock.

  4. Boil the stock.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a separate pan.

  2. Cook the ham until done.

  3. Add chopped basil, marjoram, parsley, and thyme.

  4. Stir in enough flour for the soup.

  5. Cook the flour mixture.

  6. Strain the stock and mix it in smoothly.

  7. Let the mixture boil for an hour.

  8. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  9. Stir in the Madeira, pepper, salt, and cayenne.

Fry the haddock and serve

  1. Cut the haddock fillets into 1-inch pieces.

  2. Remove the skin.

  3. Fry them in butter with pepper and salt.

  4. Drain the fried haddock.

  5. Place it in a tureen and pour the soup over it.

  6. Add the oysters and their liquor for an improvement.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together445 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Haddocks
Provide the main flesh of the soup, fried and served in the tureen.
Leg of beef
Adds meaty body and savoury depth to the stock that forms the soup base.
Butter
Enriches the soup and gives the haddock a golden, richly flavoured fried surface.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, body-rich soup.
Oysters
Add briny flavour and a soft, delicate texture to the finished soup.
Madeira
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Pressing the thickened stock through a fine sieve removes bones, vegetable fibres and lumps, leaving the soup smooth. Skipping or rushing this leaves a coarse, gritty texture.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, beef, fish, onion, carrot, turnip, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, beef, fish, onion, carrot, turnip, 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipes