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Water Souchy

A fish stew made with white broth, parsley, onion, horseradish, and bay leaf, served over toasted bread.

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

Prepare the fish

  1. Place the cleaned fish pieces in a stewpan and cover them with white broth.

  2. Add parsley, pepper, chopped onion, scraped horseradish, and bay leaf.

Cook

  1. Bring to a boil and skim carefully.

  2. Cook for a few minutes until the fish is done.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish in a deep dish lined with toasted bread, and strain the broth over it.

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. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 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

Whitings, flounders, dabs, gudgeons, or eels
Provide the main protein, which firms and flakes as it cooks in the broth.
White broth
Poaches the fish gently and becomes the flavourful liquid served with it.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the broth.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent aroma that mellows during cooking.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil and skim carefully. Boiling too hard breaks delicate fish apart and makes the broth cloudy, while skimming removes coagulated proteins and foam so the broth stays clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, fish, parsley, pepper, horseradish):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, fish, parsley, pepper, horseradish. 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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