Name: Cuisson
Ingredients: 3 quarts water; 1 handful coarse sea salt; ½ cup vinegar; 1 carrot, sliced; 1 onion, sliced; ½ handful whole peppers; 1 bunch parsley roots; 3 sprigs thyme; 3 bay leaves

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cuisson

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

Fill a saucepan with 3 quarts of water.
Add a handful of coarse sea salt, ½ cup of vinegar, sliced carrot, sliced onion, whole peppers, parsley roots, thyme, and bay leaves.
Cook on moderate heat for 15 minutes.

Cool and store

Cool and use as needed for various fish cooking methods.

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.

Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,563 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carrot: Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as it simmers.
Onion: Contributes savory sweetness and aromatic flavour to the liquid.
Vinegar: Adds a light acidity that brightens the broth's flavour.

Swap the onion

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

Parsnipfits better
Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, carrot, pepper, parsley, thyme. 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.