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Court Bouillon with Wine

A fish broth made with wine, garlic, onion, cloves, thyme, bay leaf, and bacon or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Court Bouillon with Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the cleaned fish in a fish kettle.

  2. Add wine, salt, pepper, garlic, onion, cloves, thyme, bay leaf, and bacon or butter.

  3. If it's a fast day, add olive oil.

Cook and serve

  1. Hang the kettle over the fire and let the wine ignite to enhance flavor.

  2. Reduce the court bouillon by two-thirds.

  3. Remove the fish, drain it, and serve on a napkin.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Garlic + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,608 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Provides the main flesh and flavor that the stock is built around.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic flavor, and its reduction concentrates the liquid.
Bacon or butter
Adds fat that carries flavor from the aromatics into the liquid.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savory depth as it softens in the liquid.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows during simmering.

The step that matters

Reduce the court bouillon by two-thirds. Reducing too little leaves the stock weak and watery, while reducing too far concentrates salt and bitterness. Reduction intensifies flavor by evaporating water and concentrating the dissolved compounds from the fish and aromatics.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, wine, pepper, garlic, onion, thyme, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, wine, pepper, garlic, onion, thyme, butter. 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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