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Fish Soup

A broth made by boiling fish with vegetables and spices, then adding fish pieces back.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the fish in water with the vegetables and spices until cooked.

  2. Remove the fish, cut off the flesh, and return the bones and trimmings to the saucepan.

  3. Simmer gently for an hour, then strain the broth.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the fish pieces back into the soup and heat through.

  2. If desired, stir in sherry before serving.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 and flavor, and its bones and trimmings give the broth body.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they cook into the broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic vegetable flavor to the broth.
Parsley
Contributes fresh herbal aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for an hour. Keeping the broth at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil extracts flavor from the bones and vegetables while keeping the liquid clear. A vigorous boil can cloud the broth and break up the flavor.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, onion, parsley, celery, clove, sherry):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, onion, parsley, celery, clove, 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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