Name: Court-Bouillon
Ingredients: 4 quarts of water; 1 onion; 1 slice of carrot; 2 cloves; 2 tablespoons of coarse sea salt; 1 teaspoon of pepper; 1 tablespoon of vinegar; juice of ½ lemon; bouquet of sweet herbs

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Court-Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Tie the onion, carrot, cloves, and herbs in a piece of muslin.

Make the stock

Put the muslin bag in the water with the other ingredients.
Cover and boil slowly for 1 hour.
Add the fish and cook as directed for plain boiling.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,873 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onion: Adds savory, aromatic flavor to the stock as it simmers.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the stock.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the stock.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, clove, pepper, vinegar, lemon):

Capsicumfits better
Parsnipfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, clove, pepper, vinegar, lemon. 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.