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Cheap Fish Soups

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Crab and anchovy share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 79 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Cheap Fish Soups

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the skin from the fish and any oily particles on the surface.

  2. Slice the fish into thick cutlets and stew it with vegetables and herbs.

  3. Strain the soup and let it settle, then reheat it.

  4. Add rice and minced parsley, or thicken with rice flour, or serve clear.

  5. For added flavor, include cold fish, crab, lobster, or oysters after gentle simmering.

  6. Add anchovy or fish sauce if desired.

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. Crab + anchovytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together79 recipes

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

  2. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Salmon + oystertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together672 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, rice, flour, salmon, crab, oyster, anchovy):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, rice, flour, salmon, crab, oyster, anchovy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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