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New Orleans Court Bouillon

A fish bouillon made with onions, tomatoes, cloves, pepper, salt, flour, claret, fish slices, and toast.

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; stew for 30 minutes.

  3. Stir in flour and claret; boil while stirring for 5 minutes until flour is cooked.

  4. Strain the sauce and return it to a saucepan over heat.

Cook and serve

  1. Add fish slices and simmer gently for 6 to 10 minutes until cooked.

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

  3. Place cooked fish on the toast.

  4. Add remaining claret to the sauce.

  5. Pour 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 build the sweet, savory base of the sauce.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the sauce as they stew.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the fish rather than running off.
Claret
Adds acidity and depth of flavor, and its alcohol carries aromas through the sauce.
Fish
Forms the main protein, which turns opaque and firm as it cooks gently in the sauce.
Toast
Soaks up sauce at the base, giving the dish a soft, absorbent layer under the fish.

The step that matters

Boiling the flour and claret. Flour must boil while stirring for the full time so its starch cooks and thickens smoothly; undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste and cloudy texture in the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

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