Skip to main content
Main

Cabillaud a LA Provencale

Braised cod in a sauce of velouté, white wine, shallots, anchovy paste, capers, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 salt.

Cook the fish and sauce

  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.

  4. Reduce the sauce until you obtain the desired consistency.

Finish the sauce

  1. Remove the herbs, add the egg yolks, work in the butter, and strain through a tamis.

  2. Return the sauce 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
Forms the main body of the dish, flaking into moist pieces when cooked gently.
Velouté sauce
Provides the creamy base that reduces to coat the fish.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sauce as it reduces.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a smooth, rich texture.
Butter
Adds fat and gloss, enriching the sauce's flavour and mouthfeel.
Shallots
Contribute a mild, sweet onion-like aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the sauce is too hot when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Keep the heat low and strain afterward to smooth out any lumps.

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.

You might also like

Illustration of Tomato SoupIllustrationTomato Soup526 recipesIllustration of Brown BreadIllustrationBrown Bread461 recipesIllustration of Mutton BrothIllustrationMutton Broth292 recipesIllustration of Yorkshire PuddingIllustrationYorkshire Pudding264 recipes