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Fish Meagre Soup

A clear soup made with meagre fish, vegetables, anchovies, and vermicelli, clarified with beaten egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fish Meagre Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the fish, mace, turnips, onions, and celery.

  2. Add the water or veal broth and simmer gently until the fish is cooked.

  3. Add the boned anchovies and strain the soup.

Clarify and finish

  1. Whisk the beaten egg and add it to the soup to clarify.

  2. If desired, add a little liquid color and strain again.

  3. Finally, add the vermicelli and heat through 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mace + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Mace + celerytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Skate or other fish
Gives the soup its main flavor and body as it simmers.
Egg
Its proteins set on heating and gather impurities so the soup clears when strained.
Vermicelli
Adds starch and body to the finished soup.
Anchovies
Adds savory depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg to clarify. The egg must be stirred in so it is distributed evenly before heating. As the egg proteins set, they trap cloudy particles, which strain out and leave a clearer soup. Adding it to a boiling soup or skipping the strain would leave it cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, fish, turnip, onion, celery, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, fish, turnip, onion, celery, egg. 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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