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Fish Soupe'maigbe

A fish soup made with common fish, vegetables, butter, egg yolks, and a French roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and sorrel work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and 25 recipes mention both. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Clean and wash the fish thoroughly.

  2. Stew the fish with carrots, lettuces, leeks, onions, and sorrel in enough water to cover them until everything is soft.

  3. Strain the mixture through a coarse cloth.

  4. Boil the liquid, covered, for 1 hour.

Finish the soup

  1. Cut some of the vegetables small.

  2. Sauté the cut vegetables in butter.

  3. Simmer the sautéed vegetables in the soup for 1 hour with pepper, salt, and cloves.

  4. Soften the French roll in good broth.

  5. Mix the yolks of 6 eggs with a few crumbs.

  6. Stir the egg yolk mixture into the soup.

  7. Pour the soup over the softened roll before serving.

  8. If using peas, add the pulp and some of the water they were boiled in to achieve the desired consistency.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Fish + sorreltop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  2. Lettuce + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Leek + sorreltop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together112 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,555 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

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the soup and add richness when stirred in.
Butter
Fat that softens and carries flavor from the sautéed vegetables.
French roll
Absorbs broth, becoming soft and giving the soup body.
Fish
Provides the main savory flavor in the broth.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolk mixture into the soup. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently; adding them to very hot soup without tempering or constant stirring can cause them to scramble into grainy lumps.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, carrot, lettuce, leek, onion, sorrel, pepper):

  1. Celerybetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, carrot, lettuce, leek, onion, sorrel, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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 fish soup recipes

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