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To Boil Au Court Bouillon

A fish is boiled in a broth made from onion, celery, parsley, salt, peppercorns, bay leaf, cloves, water, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Boil Au Court Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the court bouillon

  1. Fry the onion, celery, and parsley in a little butter.

  2. Add salt, peppercorns, bay leaf, cloves, boiling water, and vinegar to the pan. Boil for 15 minutes. Skim.

  3. Strain the liquid.

Poach and serve

  1. Rub the fish with lemon juice. Rub the fish with salt. Place the fish in a kettle.

  2. Cover it with the court bouillon. Boil the fish slowly until done.

  3. Serve the fish with a sauce as if it were plainly boiled.

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

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

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

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

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar or sour wine
Adds acidity that helps firm the fish and gives the bouillon its tang.
Fish
The main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks gently in the liquid.
Onion
Builds a sweet, savory aromatic base for the bouillon.
Celery
Adds a vegetal aromatic background to the bouillon.

The step that matters

Boil the fish slowly until done. Vigorous boiling breaks up delicate fish and toughens its proteins, so a gentle simmer keeps the flesh tender and intact.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, parsley, clove, vinegar, fish, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, parsley, clove, vinegar, fish, 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.

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