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Fish Soup

A soup made from fish bones, skin, vegetables, and spices, simmered for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove any flesh from the cooked fish and set aside for later use.

  2. Place the fish bones and skin into the cooking liquid.

  3. Add the turnip, carrot, onions, toasted bread, celery, peppercorns, and mace.

Simmer and strain

  1. Boil for 2 hours or until the vegetables are tender.

  2. Remove the fish bones and sieve the vegetables into the soup.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Fish bones
Release gelatine and savoury flavour into the broth as they simmer.
Onions
Add sweetness and depth as they soften and break down in the liquid.
Toasted bread
Adds body and a toasted, nutty flavour, helping thicken the sieved soup.
Turnip
Contributes mild sweetness and body as it cooks until tender.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and colour, and thickens the soup when sieved.

The step that matters

Simmering for 2 hours. Long gentle simmering extracts flavour and gelatine from the bones while the vegetables soften fully. Boiling too hard can cloud the broth and make it greasy, so keep it at a steady, gentle simmer.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, turnip, carrot, onion, bread, celery. 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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