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Matelotte Sauce a LA Nokmande

A sauce made from crayfish, mussels, oysters, mushrooms, anchovies, white wine, oyster liquor, and velouté, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Matelotte Sauce a LA Nokmande

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the flesh from the tails of the crayfish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the crayfish, mussels, oysters, mushrooms, anchovies, white wine, oyster liquor, and Veloute sauce.

  2. Cover and simmer for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve and set aside in a cool place until needed.

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. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Crayfish + saucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together195 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Crayfish + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Crayfish + white winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Crayfish
Provides the main shellfish flavour and sweet meat for the sauce.
Mussels
Add briny, savoury shellfish flavour that deepens the sauce during simmering.
Oysters
Contribute a briny, mineral sea flavour and body to the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the shellfish flavours and helps extract them.
Anchovies
Contribute deep savoury umami that rounds out the seafood flavour.
Veloute sauce
Gives the sauce a smooth, thickened body and carries the flavours.

The step that matters

Simmering covered for 1 hour. Gentle, covered simmering extracts flavour from the shellfish without boiling it hard, which can toughen the meat and make the sauce cloudy or bitter. Keep the heat low and the lid on.

“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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