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Gurnets, a LA Dauphine

Gurnets are boiled, coated in sauce and breadcrumbs, baked, and served with Ravigotte sauce and crayfish tails.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Gurnets, a LA Dauphine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and poach

  1. Cut off the heads and fins from the gurnets.

  2. Boil the gurnets in water with salt and vinegar until done.

  3. Drain and skin the gurnets.

Coat and cool

  1. Cover the gurnets with stiffly reduced Allemande sauce.

  2. Let the sauce-covered gurnets cool.

  3. Beat the egg and coat the gurnets.

  4. Cover the gurnets with bread crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the gurnets on a greased baking sheet.

  2. Bake in the oven for half an hour until golden brown.

  3. Garnish with Ravigotte sauce and crayfish tails before serving.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + crayfishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together195 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + crayfishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Gurnets
Main fish that is poached, then baked until golden in its coating.
Stiffly-reduced allemande sauce
Thick sauce that clings to the fish and holds the crumb coating in place.
Egg
Beaten egg binds the bread crumbs to the sauce-covered fish.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer layer when baked.
Crayfish tails
Add a delicate shellfish flavor as a garnish.

The step that matters

Let the sauce-covered gurnets cool. Cooling lets the reduced sauce set and firm up so the egg and bread crumbs can adhere without the coating sliding off or melting into the fish during baking.

“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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