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Fish Soup

A clear fish soup made with fish stock, milk, vegetables, and diced fish, finished with lemon juice and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Remove all fat from the fish stock.

  2. Pour the stock into a saucepan.

  3. Add the peppercorns, onion, turnip, herbs, and carrot.

  4. Boil for 20 minutes.

  5. Strain out the vegetables.

  6. Return the stock to the saucepan.

Thicken and cook the fish

  1. Mix the cornflour smoothly with the milk.

  2. Stir the mixture into the stock.

  3. Continue stirring until it boils.

  4. Add the diced fish.

  5. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  6. Add a few drops of lemon juice.

  7. Add salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Pour into a tureen.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it gently simmers in the soup.
Cornflour
Thickens the stock into a light, smooth body when it is mixed with milk and boiled.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy body to the soup, softening its flavour.
Fish stock
Forms the liquid base that carries all the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornflour mixture into the stock. Cornflour clumps if added unmixed; blending it smoothly with cold milk first lets the starch disperse evenly, and continuous stirring until it boils lets the starch swell and thicken the soup without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, milk, turnip, thyme, parsley, carrot, lemon):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, milk, turnip, thyme, parsley, carrot, lemon. 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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