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Fish Soups

A hearty fish soup made with prawns, trout quenelles, rice, and a veal consommé base.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine diced carrots, celery, parsley roots, butter, thyme, mignonette pepper, and salt in a stewpan.

  2. Fry the mixture until light in color.

  3. Add the remaining prawns and the bodies of prawns.

  4. Pour in the Sauternes wine and boil for 10 minutes.

  5. Stir in the boiled rice and veal consommé.

  6. Allow the mixture to boil gently for 30 minutes.

  7. Strain the mixture through a sieve, then reserve the broth in a basin.

Make the soup

  1. Pound the prawns, rice, and vegetables together in a mortar.

  2. Dilute the mixture with the reserved broth and rub through a tammie.

  3. Put the puree into a soup pot.

  4. Keep the soup cool until dinner time.

  5. Heat the soup without boiling.

  6. Mix in lobster coral butter, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Pour the soup into a tureen with the prawns' tails and quenelles of trout.

  2. 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 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

Prawns
Their shells and flesh give the soup its main flavor and body when pounded and strained.
Rice
Boiled and pounded into the puree, it thickens the soup and gives it a smooth body.
Butter
Fat carries aroma from the frying vegetables and rounds out the soup's richness.
Carrots
Frying them builds sweetness and savory depth in the base.
Sauternes wine
Its acidity and sweetness add aromatic depth as it reduces during boiling.
Veal consommé
Provides a savory, gelatin-rich liquid that carries the flavor of the soup.

The step that matters

Keep the soup cool, then heat without boiling. Boiling a puree made with egg-free thickening can cause it to separate or turn grainy, and it can dull the delicate flavor of the shellfish and butter. Gentle heat keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsley, butter, thyme, pepper, wine, rice):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsley, butter, thyme, pepper, wine, rice. 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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