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Gabillaud a LA Provencale.

A braised cod dish with velouté sauce, white wine, shallots, anchovy paste, capers, parsley, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 398 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash and wipe the fish well.

  2. Place it in a stewpan and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Braise the fish

  1. Add velouté sauce, white wine, chopped shallots, and bouquet garni.

  2. Simmer slowly until the fish is done, basting occasionally.

  3. Transfer the fish to a dish and keep warm.

Finish the sauce

  1. Reduce the sauce until it reaches the desired consistency.

  2. Remove the herbs, add the egg yolks, and work in the butter.

  3. Pass the sauce through a tammy and return to a smaller stewpan.

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. Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together398 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Shallot + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,718 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. White wine + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Capers + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Codfish
Provides the main body of the dish, cooking gently to flake tender and moist.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and sauce, thickening it into a smooth, rich texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a glossy, silky finish and rounder flavour to the sauce.
Velouté sauce
Forms the base of the sauce, providing body and a savoury backbone.
White wine
Adds acidity to the braising liquid, brightening the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Work in the butter with the egg yolks. Egg yolks and butter form an emulsion only when the sauce is warm but not boiling. Overheating can scramble the yolks and make the sauce grainy or split.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, white wine, shallot, butter, egg, anchovy, capers):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, white wine, shallot, butter, egg, anchovy, capers. 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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