Skip to main content
Main

Stock for Brown or White Fish Soups

A stock made from skate, flounder, eels, and aromatics, simmered for 1.5 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stock for Brown or White Fish Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and cut the skate, flounders, and eels into pieces.

  2. Cover the fish with water and season with mace, pepper, coarse sea salt, onion, celery, parsley roots, and sweet herbs.

Simmer and strain

  1. Simmer for 1.5 hours, closely covered.

  2. Strain the stock for use.

Brown soup variation

  1. For brown soup, fry the fish in butter before following the above steps.

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

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Skate
Provides body and gelatin, giving the stock a richer mouthfeel as it simmers.
Flounders
Add delicate fish flavour and gelatin to the stock during simmering.
Eels
Contribute gelatin and savoury depth to the stock during long simmering.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic flavour to the stock.
Celery
Adds savoury, vegetal aroma that rounds out the stock.

The step that matters

Simmer closely covered. Keeping the pot closely covered at a gentle simmer limits evaporation and keeps the stock concentrated. A rolling boil can cloud the liquid and emulsify fat into it, so the stock stays clearer and cleaner-tasting.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, clove, celery, parsley, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, clove, celery, parsley, 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

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes