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Carp an Bleu, or with Court Bouillon

Carp simmered in a court bouillon with carrots, onions, parsley, and herbs, served with anchovy sauce.

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 ↓

Carp an Bleu, or with Court Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carp

  1. Clean the carp without opening the belly too much or damaging the scales. Remove the gills without spoiling the tongue.

  2. Place the carp in a kettle. Boil the red vinegar, then sprinkle the boiled vinegar over the carp to give it a blue color.

Make the court bouillon

  1. In a pan, fry the sliced carrots, onions, and parsley in butter until brown.

  2. Add the port wine, water, seasoned faggot, and sweet basil to the pan. Stew for one hour.

  3. Strain the liquid for use.

Serve

  1. Serve the carp on a napkin with anchovy sauce on the side.

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. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + basiltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

  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

Carp
Is the main fish that is cleaned, colored with vinegar and served whole.
Port wine
Forms the main body of the broth, adding depth, color and a sweet, fruity flavor.
Red vinegar
Acidity that sets the skin to a blue color when poured over the carp.
Butter
Fat used to fry the vegetables, helping them brown and develop flavor.
Onions
Sweetness and aroma as they brown in butter before the liquid is added.
Carrots
Adds sweetness and body to the broth as they fry and then stew.

The step that matters

Sprinkling the boiled vinegar over the carp. The vinegar must be boiled and poured over the fish while it is still intact and its skin unbroken. The acid reacts with the fish's surface to produce the blue color, so a damaged skin or a cooled vinegar will give poor results.

Swap the basil

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, carrot, onion, parsley, butter, port wine, anchovy. 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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