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Fish Soup, Simple

A simple turbot fish soup with rice, onion, mace, pepper, sea salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Fish Soup, Simple

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Stew the bones and head of the turbot in the fish boiling liquor for 2 hours.

  2. Strain the soup and return it to the pot.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add rice, onion, and mace, then simmer for another 30 minutes.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Mix in the boiling milk 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Turbot bones and head
Release gelatin and flavour into the liquor, giving the soup its body and fish taste.
Rice
Thickens the soup as its starch softens during simmering.
Milk
Adds richness and softens the flavour, rounding out the fish taste.

The step that matters

Mix in the boiling milk before serving. Milk can curdle or separate if it is overheated or boiled hard after it is added. Stirring it in just before serving keeps the soup smooth and creamy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, fish, rice, onion, clove, pepper, milk):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, fish, rice, onion, clove, pepper, milk. 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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