Skip to main content
Main

Salmon Au Court Bouillon

A poached salmon flavored with wine, water, vinegar, herbs, and butter.

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

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Salmon Au Court Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Draw and clean the salmon, then score the sides deeply.

  2. Season the fish with salt, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, onions, chives, parsley, lemon, bay leaves, and basil.

  3. Mix the butter with a little flour and place it inside the fish.

  4. Wrap the salmon in a napkin and bind it with kitchen twine.

Poach and serve

  1. Place the wrapped salmon in a large fish kettle.

  2. Pour equal parts wine, water, and vinegar over the fish to cover it.

  3. Set the kettle over high heat and boil for 20 to 30 minutes, depending on the size of the fish.

  4. Once cooked, remove the fish and keep it warm on the side until ready to serve.

  5. Unwrap the fish and place it on a serving dish.

  6. Garnish with parsley.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently by poaching in the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, melting into the fish as it cooks.
Flour
Mixed with the butter to thicken and help bind the fat inside the fish.
Wine and vinegar
Make up the acidic poaching liquid that flavours the fish and helps it hold its shape.

The step that matters

Boiling time for the fish. Cooking time depends on the fish's size. Boiling too long dries out and toughens the flesh, while too short leaves the centre undercooked, so check the thickest part for doneness.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, pepper, clove, nutmeg, chive, parsley, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, pepper, clove, nutmeg, chive, parsley, lemon. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesSalmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesCanned SalmonCanned Salmon14 recipes