Skip to main content
Drink

To Boil Au Court Bouillon

A fish is boiled slowly in a seasoned court bouillon made of 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
Jump to recipe ↓

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. In a pan, fry the onion, celery, and parsley in a little butter.

  2. Add salt, peppercorns, bay leaf, cloves, boiling water, and vinegar to the pan.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes, skim, and strain the liquid.

Cook and serve the fish

  1. Rub the fish with lemon juice and salt.

  2. Place the fish in a kettle and cover it with the court bouillon.

  3. Boil the fish slowly until done.

  4. 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 to the broth, which helps firm the fish and gives it a sharp flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness to the fish, sharpening its flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the fish slowly until done. Gentle simmering keeps the fish moist and tender, while a hard boil can toughen the flesh and break it apart.

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.

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesLemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipes