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New Orleans Court Bouillon

A fish bouillon made with onions, tomatoes, parsley, cayenne, salt, flour, claret, and fish, served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

New Orleans Court Bouillon

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the onions in butter until soft but not browned.

  2. Add water and chopped tomatoes, then stir in parsley, cayenne, and salt.

  3. Thicken the sauce with a sprinkling of flour and cook for about 30 minutes.

  4. If the sauce reduces too much, add more water or tomatoes.

Cook the fish and serve

  1. Add the fish pieces to the sauce and let it stew slowly until cooked.

  2. Serve the fish on a large flat dish with pieces of toast.

  3. Just before serving, add claret to the sauce, bring to a boil, and pour over the fish and toast.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and build a sweet, savory base for the sauce when cooked in butter.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity, body and moisture that form the bulk of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the fish and toast.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while softening the onions.
Claret
Adds wine acidity and aroma stirred in just before serving.
Fish
Forms the main protein, cooking gently in the simmering sauce until flaky.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour. Flour must be sprinkled in evenly and cooked through for about 30 minutes; if it clumps or is undercooked, the sauce stays pasty or tastes raw-floury.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, tomato, butter, pepper, flour, 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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