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Sardines a LA Provencale

Sardines à la Provençale is sardines on fried bread fingers topped with a sauce of egg yolks, butter, cream, anchovy essence, onions, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,145 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Fry the bread fingers in clarified butter until golden, then drain them.

  2. Place one sardine on each bread finger and arrange them on a round dish in a lattice pattern.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the beaten egg yolks, butter, cream, essence of anchovy, chopped onions, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

  2. Stir the mixture over low heat until it thickens.

Bake and serve

  1. Heat the dish in a 400 °F (200 °C) oven for a few minutes until hot.

  2. Pour the sauce over the sardines, sprinkle with meat glaze, and serve.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Bread + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,145 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together41,494 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Egg + anchovytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,268 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together22,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Provide the main fish flavour and the savoury centre of the dish.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set gently over low heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, helping the sauce stay smooth rather than grainy.
Bread
Forms a crisp, golden base that holds the sardines above the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce over low heat. Egg yolks set at moderate temperatures, and high heat or long stirring can scramble them into lumps. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the sauce smooth and pourable.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, egg, cream, anchovy, pepper, meat):

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Asparagusbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, egg, cream, anchovy, pepper, meat. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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