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New Orleans Court Bouillon

A New Orleans fish soup with onions, tomatoes, cloves, and claret wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

New Orleans Court Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the chopped onions in butter until soft.

  2. Add tomatoes, cloves, pepper, and salt.

  3. Add toast.

  4. Stew for 30 minutes.

  5. Stir in flour and ½ pint of claret.

  6. Boil while stirring for 5 minutes.

  7. Strain the sauce.

  8. Return the strained sauce to a saucepan.

Cook and serve

  1. Add fish slices.

  2. Simmer gently for 6 to 10 minutes until cooked.

  3. Prepare a deep dish with slices of toast covering the bottom.

  4. Place cooked fish on the toast.

  5. Add remaining 1 pint of claret to the sauce.

  6. Pour the sauce over the fish.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + red winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Clove + red winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Softened in butter to form the sweet, aromatic base of the sauce.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the sauce, balancing the wine and butter.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the fish and toast.
Claret (red wine)
Adds acidity and depth of flavour, and liquid for the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour of the softened onions.

The step that matters

Boil the flour and claret while stirring. Flour thickens only when its starch is heated with liquid and stirred, so stirring prevents lumps and the boil fully cooks the raw flour taste out of the sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, tomato, clove, pepper, flour, red wine):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tomato, clove, pepper, flour, red wine. 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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