Skip to main content
Main

Stock Fob Fish Soup

A fish soup made with flounder, perch, veal broth, ham, vegetables, herbs, wine, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Stock Fob Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Gut and clean the flounders and perch carefully.

Make the soup

  1. Place the fish in a stewpan with the veal broth.

  2. Add the ham, carrots, celery, onions, sweet herbs, salt, and cayenne.

  3. Stew until the fish can pass through a coarse sieve.

  4. Return the mixture to the stewpan with butter and flour to thicken.

  5. Add the white wine and garlic vinegar.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flounders and perch
Provide the fish body and flavour that the stock is built from.
Veal broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the fish and vegetables.
Butter and flour
Together they form a roux that thickens the soup.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to balance the rich broth.

The step that matters

Stew until the fish can pass through a coarse sieve. The fish must be cooked until it breaks down fully; if it is underdone it will not pass through the sieve and will not release its flavour into the stock.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, veal, ham, carrot, celery, pepper, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, veal, ham, carrot, celery, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipes