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Fish Au Court Bouillon

A fish simmered in a broth of carrot, onion, celery, butter, parsley, cloves, peppercorns, vinegar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fish Au Court Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a pot, fry the chopped carrot, onion, and celery in butter until softened.

  2. Add parsley, cloves, peppercorns, boiling water, and vinegar; let boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Add salt to taste.

Poach and serve

  1. Tie the fish in a napkin and simmer in the broth until cooked through.

  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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Blue fish
Is the main protein, cooked gently in the broth until it turns opaque and flakes.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the broth its sharp, sour flavour.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the softened vegetables and adds richness to the broth.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, building the base flavour of the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer the fish until cooked through. Simmering rather than boiling keeps the fish tender and prevents it from breaking apart. Cooking until the flesh is opaque and flakes easily ensures it is safely done.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, celery, butter, parsley, vinegar, fish):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, celery, butter, parsley, vinegar, 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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