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Court-Bouillon, or Liquor for Boiling Fish

A liquid boiling fish made from butter, onion, carrot, bay leaves, cloves, garlic, thyme, basil, ginger, red wine, water, salt, peppercorns, parsley, and green onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,768 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Court-Bouillon, or Liquor for Boiling Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a stew-pan over medium heat.

  2. Add sliced onion, carrot, bay leaves, cloves, garlic, thyme, sweet basil, and ginger, then cook until the vegetables start to brown.

  3. Add red wine and water to moisten the mixture.

  4. Add coarse sea salt and whole peppercorns.

  5. Let the mixture stew for 1 hour.

  6. Strain the mixture through a sieve to use as needed.

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. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 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

Red wine
Provides acidity and body, and carries the aromatics into the broth.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it softens and browns.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the stock.
Garlic
Adds aroma and savoury depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the vegetables. Cooking the onion, carrot and aromatics until they start to brown develops sweet, savoury flavours through browning. Pale vegetables give a flatter, less rich broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, clove, garlic, thyme, basil, ginger):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, clove, garlic, thyme, basil, ginger. 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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