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Fish Soups

A hearty soup made with prawns, trout quenelles, and lobster coral butter, simmered with vegetables and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fish Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Dice the carrots, celery, and parsley roots.

  2. In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the diced vegetables, thyme, pepper, and salt.

  3. Fry the mixture until lightly colored.

  4. Add the remaining prawns and the bodies of the prawns.

Make the soup

  1. Pour in the Sauterne wine and boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Stir in the boiled rice and consomme, then simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture, reserving the broth.

  4. Pound the prawns, rice, and vegetables together, then dilute with the reserved broth.

  5. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve into a soup pot.

  6. Keep the puree cool until dinner time.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, heat the puree without boiling, then mix in lobster coral butter, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.

  2. Pour the soup into a tureen with the prawns' tails and quenelles of trout.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 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

Butter
Melted fat that softens the vegetables and carries the flavor of the shellfish.
Prawns
Provide the main shellfish flavor, both in the puree and as garnish.
Rice
Thickens the puree, giving the soup a smooth, body-rich texture.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the base.
Sauterne wine
Adds acidity and fruity aroma that deepen the shellfish flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the finished soup.

The step that matters

Heating the puree without boiling. Boiling the puree after the coral butter is added can cause it to separate and dull its flavor, so it should be heated gently just before serving.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsley, butter, thyme, pepper, wine, rice):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsley, butter, thyme, pepper, wine, rice. 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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