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Dessert

Pommes De Terre Au Court Bouillon

Potatoes boiled in court bouillon, seasoned with coarse sea salt, served with hollandaise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,855 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pommes De Terre Au Court Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the potatoes into the shape of large olives and place them in cold water.

Cook and season

  1. Boil the potatoes in fish stock or court bouillon for 15 to 20 minutes until tender.

  2. Drain, season with coarse sea salt, and dry the potatoes.

Serve

  1. Arrange the potatoes around the fish and garnish with parsley.

  2. Serve with Hollandaise Sauce.

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. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Potato + saucetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk of the dish, turning tender and soft when boiled.
Fish stock or court bouillon (in the method)
Cooks the potatoes while adding savoury flavour to their surface.
Hollandaise sauce
Adds richness and fat that complements the mild, starchy potatoes.

The step that matters

Drain, season with coarse sea salt, and dry the potatoes. Potatoes absorb seasoning best while still hot and moist, but excess surface water dilutes flavour and softens texture. Drying them after draining helps the salt cling and keeps the potatoes from becoming waterlogged.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, sauce. 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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