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COURT BOUILLON (with wine)
Take one part of vinegar, one of red wine, and four of water; put them into a saucepan, and for every three quarts of liquid allow half an ounce of pepper, one ounce of salt, a bunch of savoury herbs, two bay-leaves, one sliced onion, and one sliced carrot. Simmer for an hour, strain the liquid, and it will be ready for use. Court bouillon is used to boil fresh-water fish, to take off its insipidity. The quantity must depend upon the size of the fish, which ought to be well covered. When it is once made, however, it will keep for a long time if it is boiled up every three days, and diluted every time with one breakfast-cupful of water. If this is not done, it will become too strong and concentrated. Oil and vinegar is the only sauce that is eaten with fish boiled in court bouillon, and served cold. The wine may be omitted. Probable cost, exclusive of the wine, 6d. Sufficient for two quarts and a half.
A working poaching liquid rather than a dish, and the proportions here are sharper than modern practice. A few adjustments make it usable.
- The hinge: cook it, then cool itThe liquor must be simmered and strained before the fish goes near it, and it should be barely trembling — 160-175F — when the fish poaches. Dropping fish into a rolling boil splits the skin and squeezes the flesh dry, which is the opposite of what this bath is for.
- The acid is high by today's tasteOne part vinegar and one part wine to four of water gives a third of the liquid as wine and vinegar. Modern poaching liquors are generally far less sharp — often a cup or so of wine or vinegar to two quarts of water. If you want the original character without stripping the fish, keep the wine and cut the vinegar to a quarter of the stated amount.
- Weights into spoonsHalf an ounce of pepper is about 2 tablespoons of peppercorns — use them whole or cracked, never ground, or the strained liquid turns muddy. An ounce of salt is about 2 level tablespoons, which in three quarts is a light brine of roughly one per cent.
- Why red wineRed wine appears in some older freshwater-fish liquors and suits darker or muddy-tasting fish; it is not the usual bath for trout and salmon. The blue-grey bloom of fish au bleu comes from acid — normally vinegar — acting on the slime coating of a very fresh fish, rather than from the wine. On pale-fleshed fish such as pike or perch the red will tint the flesh dull mauve, so use white wine or the wine-free version noted at the end.
- A bunch of savoury herbsRead this as a bouquet garni: parsley stalks, a sprig or two of thyme, and the bay-leaves already specified, tied so they lift out. Marjoram or a little celery leaf is in keeping.
- Storage, not as writtenBoiling the pot up every three days on a larder shelf was the Victorian way of holding a stock without refrigeration, and it is not worth reproducing. Strain, chill quickly, refrigerate up to three days or freeze in portions; the fish poached in it will have left proteins behind that spoil faster than the vegetables did.
- Reuse and dilutionThe advice to add a breakfast-cupful of water — about half a pint — each time is sound in principle, since evaporation concentrates both salt and acid. Taste before each use and correct with water rather than measuring.
- Yield and quantityAs written the recipe makes two and a half quarts, which in a deep pan or fish kettle will cover a fish of a few pounds; the book itself says the quantity must depend on the size of the fish, which ought to be well covered. Scale the whole formula rather than the water alone, and keep the fish only just submerged.
Court bouillon is usually explained as "short broth" — short in the sense of quickly made and briefly cooked rather than reduced — and it belongs to the older French kitchen practice of giving each type of fish its own poaching liquor rather than boiling everything in salted water. The reasoning here is period-typical: freshwater fish were thought insipid, and an acidulated bath with onion, carrot and herbs was the standard corrective. A similar acidulated liquor is the basis of the classic truite au bleu. The note on boiling the pot up every third day is a reminder that this was written for kitchens with a cold larder and no more. The costing in pence, here 6d without wine, together with the "sufficient for" line, runs throughout Cassell's and was one of the features that made it useful to mistresses budgeting a household rather than to professional chefs.