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Cour Bouillon Fish

A fish dish simmered in a sauce of butter, onion, garlic, flour, tomatoes, herbs, wine, mushrooms, and served with fried bread and hard-boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic 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 ↓

Cour Bouillon Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Lay fish slices in coarse sea salt for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew pan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter.

  2. Add whole red onion and minced garlic; cook until light brown.

  3. Stir in 2 tablespoons of flour, then add 1 tablespoon of tomatoes, parsley, celery, green onions, salt, red pepper, and black pepper.

  4. Pour in 1 pint of claret wine and cook the sauce well.

Cook and serve

  1. Drop in the fish, 2-3 tablespoons of butter, and the can of mushrooms.

  2. Fry the diamond-shaped bread in butter.

  3. Garnish the dish with the fried bread and hard-boiled eggs before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  3. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red fish or red snapper
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently in the wine sauce until flaky.
Claret wine
Provides liquid and acidity that build the sauce and flavor the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping onion and flour brown and carry flavor.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the fish rather than running thin.
Red onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth when cooked until light brown.
Mushrooms
Contribute moisture and savory, earthy flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce well before adding the fish. Cooking the wine and flour mixture long enough cooks off raw flour taste and thickens the sauce, so the fish is added to a stable, flavorful base rather than a thin, floury liquid.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, onion, garlic, flour, parsley, celery):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, onion, garlic, flour, 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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