Name: Cheap Fish Soup
Ingredients: 1 half-grown fish (conger eel or other); vegetables (your choice); herbs (your choice); rice (optional); minced parsley (optional); rice flour (optional); cold salmon, cod, or other fish (optional); oysters (optional); anchovy sauce (optional)

Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cheap Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

Remove the skin from the fish and any oily particles.
Slice the fish into thick cutlets.

Make the broth

Prepare a broth by stewing the cutlets with vegetables and herbs.
Strain the soup.
Let the soup settle.

Finish the soup

Reheat the soup.
Add rice and minced parsley if desired.
Thicken the soup with rice flour if desired.
Include flakes of cold fish or oysters for added flavor.
Simmer gently.

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.

Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together603 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Salmon + oystertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together672 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together496 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together637 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish: Provides the main flavor and body of the broth as it stews.
Rice flour: Thickens the soup, giving it a fuller, more velvety body.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, rice, flour, salmon, oyster, anchovy, sauce):

Capersfits better
Turmericfits about as well
Parsleythe original
Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, rice, flour, salmon, oyster, anchovy, sauce. 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.