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Cat-fish Soup

A soup made with catfish, ham, parsley, marjoram, celery, milk, butter, flour, egg yolks, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cat-fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the heads of the catfish, skin them, clean them, and cut them into thirds.

  2. Cut the ham into small pieces or thin slices and scald it in boiling water two or three times to reduce saltiness.

  3. Chop the parsley and sweet marjoram, then add them to a soup kettle with pepper.

  4. Add the chopped celery or a tablespoon of celery seed in a muslin bag to the kettle.

Make the soup

  1. Pour in 2 quarts of water, cover, and let it boil slowly until the fish and ham are tender, skimming frequently.

  2. In another pot, boil 1 quart of rich milk and melt in the butter and flour, stirring until smooth.

  3. Pour the milk mixture into the soup and stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  4. Bring the soup to a gentle boil to cook the eggs, then remove the celery seed bag before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup with toasted bread squares.

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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

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

  4. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Marjoram + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together615 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and enrich its texture as they cook gently.
Butter and flour
Form a roux with the milk that thickens and smooths the soup.
Milk
Provides the creamy base that gives the soup its richness.
Catfish
Supplies the main fish flesh that becomes tender in the simmered broth.

The step that matters

Bringing the soup to a gentle boil after adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with heat, but boiling too hard can curdle or scramble them, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth, creamy soup.

Swap the marjoram

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (catfish, ham, parsley, pepper, celery, milk, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramthe original
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against catfish, ham, parsley, pepper, celery, milk, butter. 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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