cooking liquid of poached or steamed fish,
since even brief cooking will extract flavor
and gelatin into the liquid. The traditional
cooking liquid for fish is a court bouillon or
“quick bouillon” made by briefly cooking
water, salt, wine, and aromatics together (p.
215).
The bony shells of crustaceans don’t
contain collagen, so cooking them in water
won’t give body to the extract. In fact
crustacean shells are normally extracted in
butter or oil, since their pigments and flavors
are more soluble in fat than in water(p. 220).
Other Protein Thickeners
Gelatin is the easiest, most forgiving protein
any cook deals with. Heat it up with water and
its molecules let go of each other and become
dispersed among the water molecules; cool it
and they rebond to each other; heat it again
and they disperse again. Nearly all other