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Water Souchy

Water Soucy is a fish soup made with small fish, onions, parsley, water, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 stock

  1. Chop the fish, onions, and parsley, then add them to 3 quarts of water and boil until the fish dissolves.

  2. Strain the liquid into a kettle or stew-pan.

Prepare and cook the fish

  1. Prepare additional fish by removing heads, tails, fins, and brown skin, then cut notches and soak in cold water.

  2. Add the prepared fish to the strained liquid along with salt, pepper, mace, and white wine or vinegar.

  3. Boil gently for 15 minutes, skimming as needed.

  4. Boil sliced parsley roots until tender and add them to the stew-pan along with mushroom ketchup if desired.

Serve

  1. Remove the fish and place in a deep dish or tureen, then gently pour the soup over them.

  2. Garnish with boiled parsley leaves and serve with bread and butter.

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. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

White wine or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the broth and balances the fish flavour.
Onions
Release sweetness and savoury depth into the stock as they cook.
Parsley
Contributes a fresh, herbal aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 15 minutes, skimming as needed. A rolling boil breaks delicate fish apart and clouds the broth. Gentle simmering keeps the fish intact and the liquid clear, while skimming removes foam and impurities that would otherwise cloud the soup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, onion, parsley, pepper, white wine, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, onion, parsley, pepper, white wine, mushroom, ketchup. 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.

More water soucy recipes

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