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A fish broth made with cod or similar fish, onions, tomatoes, and sherry, served over bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Broths and Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut the fish into pieces of 2 ounces to ¼ pound each.

Make the broth

  1. In a large shallow stew‑pan, heat the olive oil and fry the onions until light brown.

  2. Add the fish and enough warm water to cover them.

  3. Stir in the salt, pepper, bay leaf, diced lemon, sliced tomatoes, sherry, peppercorns, and garlic if using.

  4. Bring to a boil over high heat and cook for 12 minutes, reducing the liquid to one‑third.

  5. Add the chopped parsley and boil for 1 more minute.

Serve

  1. Serve over slices of bread.

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. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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
Provides the main flavor and body of the broth as it simmers.
Onions
Frying until light brown builds a sweet, savory base for the broth.
Olive oil
Carries the onion flavor and helps it brown in the pan.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, rounding out the broth's flavor.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma, and its alcohol carries flavor into the broth.

The step that matters

Reducing the broth to one-third. Boiling over high heat concentrates the liquid and its flavors. Boiling too long or too hard can make the broth taste harsh or overly salty, so watch the volume as it reduces.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, olive, fish, pepper, lemon, tomato, sherry):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, olive, fish, pepper, lemon, tomato, sherry. 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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