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Bouillabaisse

Bouillabaisse is a fish stew made with mixed small fish, tomatoes, onions, carrots, and aromatic herbs, simmered in broth and served with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 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 ↓

Bouillabaisse

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the fish into pieces.

  2. In a stew-pan, combine the tomatoes, onions, carrots, parsley, celery, garlic, cloves, bay leaves, thyme, shallots, salad oil, salt, peppercorns, capsicum, and lemon rind.

  3. Cover the stew-pan with cold water or fish stock.

Cook the broth

  1. Bring to a boil.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer for about 30 minutes, keeping the pan covered.

  3. Just before finishing, add the chopped parsley (scalded).

Strain and serve

  1. Remove the fish pieces.

  2. Place them on a hot dish.

  3. Brush off any vegetables.

  4. Strain the broth.

  5. Add saffron.

  6. Pour the broth into a hot soup tureen with the parsley.

  7. Serve the fish with slices of dry 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 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

Mixed small fish
Provides the main body and flavour of the dish, cooked gently in the broth.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the broth, balancing the richness of the fish and oil.
Onions
Build sweetness and depth as they soften during the long simmer.
Saffron
Adds aroma and a golden colour to the finished broth.
Fish stock or water
Forms the liquid base in which the vegetables and fish are cooked.

The step that matters

Simmer gently with the pan covered. A gentle simmer keeps the fish intact and lets the vegetables release flavour slowly. A hard boil would break the fish apart and make the broth cloudy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, whiting, tomato, onion, carrot, parsley, celery):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Fennelfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, whiting, tomato, onion, carrot, parsley, celery. 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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