Skip to main content
Main

Cat-fish Soup

A soup made with catfish, salt pork, milk, eggs, celery, and sweet herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pork and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,386 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Cat-fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and clean the catfish, then cut them into pieces.

  2. Chop the salt pork into small pieces.

Cook

  1. Combine the catfish, salt pork, water, chopped sweet herbs, and celery in a pot.

  2. Boil for one hour or until the fish and pork are cooked through.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and mix with the heated milk before adding to the pot.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Pork + celerytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,572 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Catfish + porktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together20 recipes

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

  5. Milk + celerytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Catfish
Provides the main body of the soup as flesh that becomes tender when simmered.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour that enriches the broth as it cooks.
Eggs
Beaten and blended into the hot milk, they thicken and give the soup a richer body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness to the broth, mellowing its flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the egg and milk mixture. Eggs thicken when heated but can curdle or scramble if added to boiling liquid too quickly. Mixing them with warm milk first and adding gradually helps them blend smoothly into the soup.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (catfish, pork, milk, egg):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against catfish, pork, milk, egg. 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

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipes