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A Fish Soup

A hearty fish soup with cod, lobster, anchovy, vegetables, and forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Clean and cut the codlings into pieces, reserving one piece for forcemeat.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the fish, onion, celery, turnip, parsnip, sweet herbs, and anchovies.

  3. Add 3 quarts of boiling water and stew for 2 hours.

  4. Strain the mixture and add the lobster meat, essence of anchovy, white pepper, and salt.

Make the forcemeat balls

  1. Make forcemeat balls with the reserved fish, bread crumbs, sweet herbs, butter, egg yolks, and shredded anchovy.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the forcemeat balls and crust of French roll to the soup and simmer for 12 minutes.

  2. Serve very hot.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + parsniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together561 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Codlings
Provide the flaky white fish that gives the soup its main body and flavour.
Lobster meat
Adds sweet, delicate shellfish flavour and a little texture to the finished soup.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat so the balls hold together and set firmly when simmered.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body to the forcemeat, keeping the balls tender.
Anchovies
Add savoury depth and salty umami to the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, making the forcemeat softer and more tender.

The step that matters

Simmering the forcemeat balls. Egg yolks in the forcemeat set when heated, so boiling too hard can make the balls rubbery or break them apart. A gentle simmer keeps them tender and intact.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, celery, turnip, parsnip, meat, lobster, anchovy):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, celery, turnip, parsnip, meat, lobster, anchovy. 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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