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Water Souchy

A fish stew made with water, salt, peppercorns, parsley, and parsley roots, simmered and served with parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Water Souchy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a pot, combine enough water to cover the fish, ½ cup coarse sea salt, 12 white peppercorns, a small bunch of green parsley, and 2-3 tender parsley roots.

  2. Simmer until the parsley roots are tender, about 30-60 minutes.

Cook the fish

  1. Clean the fish, removing any brown skin, and cut into 2-inch portions.

  2. Add the fish to the pot, skimming off any scum that rises.

  3. Stew the fish gently for 8-12 minutes, being careful not to overcook.

  4. A couple of minutes before serving, add minced parsley or small branches of boiled parsley.

Serve

  1. Carefully lift out the fish and parsley roots, and pour the cooking liquid over them, discarding the peppercorns.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Fish + parsleytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,341 recipes

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

  3. Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,948 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Provides the main body of the stew, becoming flaky and tender as it cooks gently.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the broth and helps draw out flavor from the fish and herbs.
Parsley roots
Add a deep, earthy flavor to the broth as they simmer.

The step that matters

Stew the fish gently. Fish is delicate and its proteins toughen and dry out when boiled hard or left too long. Gentle heat keeps the flesh moist and tender, so the fish should be checked close to the end of its time.

“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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