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Gurnets, a LA Dauphine

A French-style fish dish of gurnets coated in egg and breadcrumbs, baked and served with Ravigotte sauce and crayfish tails.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and crayfish work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 195 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Gurnets, a LA Dauphine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

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

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

  3. Drain the gurnets.

  4. Skin the gurnets.

  5. Cover the gurnets with stiffly reduced Allemande sauce.

  6. Let the gurnets cool.

Coat and bake

  1. Beat the egg.

  2. Coat the gurnets with the beaten egg.

  3. Cover the gurnets with bread crumbs.

  4. Place the gurnets on a baking sheet.

  5. Bake the gurnets in the oven for 30 minutes.

  6. Check that the gurnets have a nice color.

Serve

  1. Serve the gurnets garnished with Ravigotte sauce and crayfish tails.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Bread + crayfishtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together95 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sauce + breadtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Vinegar + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,672 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Gurnets
The main fish, poached until firm and then coated and baked.
Stiffly-reduced allemande sauce
Thick sauce that holds the coating in place and adds richness.
Egg
Beaten egg binds the bread crumbs to the fish surface.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp crust that browns in the oven.
Ravigotte sauce
Herbed sauce that adds sharp, fresh contrast to the rich fish.

The step that matters

Check that the gurnets have a nice color. Bread crumbs brown through dry heat, mainly by the Maillard reaction, so color shows whether the crust has baked properly. Pale crumbs mean the crust is underdone, while dark crumbs may be burnt and bitter.

“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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