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Fish a LA Provencale

A creamy sauce of butter, flour, milk, egg yolks, anchovy essence, and flaked fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fish a LA Provencale

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 1-2 minutes.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly until the sauce thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard boiled eggs and mix with the Anchovy essence.

  2. Add the egg mixture to the sauce and stir well.

  3. Gently fold in the flaked fish and heat through.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Anchovy + fishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted fat that forms the base of the roux and carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the butter to form a roux.
Milk
Liquid that, heated with the roux, swells and thickens into a smooth sauce.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Mashed into the sauce, adding richness and body.
Cold boiled flaked fish
Main protein, folded in at the end so it heats through without breaking up.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly. Adding milk slowly while stirring keeps the starch in the roux dispersed, preventing lumps and giving a smooth, evenly thickened sauce.

“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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