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Fish Soups

A soup made from eels, water, onion, herbs, pepper, mace, cream or milk, and flour, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fish Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine eels, water, onion, sweet herbs, whole pepper, and mace in a pot.

  2. Cover and stew until the fish breaks from the bones.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Pound the fish to a paste, then pass it through a sieve.

Prepare the bread

  1. Toast the bread.

  2. Cut the toasted bread into dice.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the boiling soup over the bread dice.

  2. Add the scallops of eel.

  3. Mix cream or milk with flour until smooth.

  4. Add the mixture to the soup.

  5. Serve.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main flavour and body of the soup as they break down during stewing.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the cream or milk so it gives the soup a smoother body.
Bread
Soaks up the hot broth, giving the soup a soft, textured element.

The step that matters

Mix cream or milk with flour until smooth. Flour clumps if stirred into hot liquid directly. Blending it smoothly with cold cream or milk first lets it disperse evenly so it thickens the soup without lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, cream, flour, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, cream, flour, bread. 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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