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Soup

Lake and Pond Fish Soup

A soup made from various lake and pond fish, tomatoes, carrots, leeks, onions, herbs, and seasonings, simmered with roots and milk or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 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 ↓

Lake and Pond Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the fish in salt and water.

  2. Stew the fish with tomato, carrots, leeks, fried onions, and sweet herbs in enough water to cover them.

  3. Cook until the mixture reduces to a pulp.

Make the soup

  1. Strain the liquid and boil it for another hour until smooth.

  2. Prepare seasonal roots by chopping them small and boiling in milk or water.

  3. Add the roots to the soup and let it simmer for 30 minutes.

  4. Season with mace, celery, and a little cayenne if using milk; season with chili vinegar, soy, or mushroom ketchup if using water.

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. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Leek + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 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

Pike
Provides the main fish flavor and body for the stock.
Eels
Adds richness and body to the broth as they break down during stewing.
Carrots
Contribute sweetness and body to the stewed base.
Leeks
Add mild onion-like aroma and savory depth to the base.
Tomato
Adds acidity and body to the stewed base.

The step that matters

Cook until the mixture reduces to a pulp. Stewing the fish and vegetables long enough breaks them down fully, so the strained liquid carries flavor and body. Undercooked fish keeps its structure and the soup stays thin and less flavorful.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, carrot, leek, onion, milk, celery, vinegar):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, carrot, leek, onion, milk, celery, vinegar. 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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