Recipe no. 54 from Jean-Baptiste Reboul's La Cuisinière provençale (1909), page 36.
Ingredients
- a piece of butter the size of an egg
- 2 tablespoons of flour
- half a glass of boiling milk
- 3 egg yolks
- 2 anchovies passed through a sieve
- a few well-desalted anchovies (for the fillets)
- puff pastry
- beaten egg (for glazing)
Preparation
- Preparing the fillingMix butter and flour in a saucepan, moisten with the boiling milk and cook a few minutes while stirring until a flowing paste is obtained; add the egg yolks and the sieved anchovies, thicken and then let cool on a plate.
- Preparing the filletsClean well-desalted anchovies and remove the fillets.
- Filling the sheetsRoll out the puff pastry into two strips; arrange the filling in strands on one of the strips, place an anchovy fillet on each strand and moisten the strips of pastry between them.
- Sealing and cuttingApply the second sheet on top, press between the fillets to seal, then divide into as many allumettes as there are fillets.
- BakingGlaze with beaten egg, arrange on a moistened baking sheet and bake in a hot oven.
Reboul's text
With a piece of butter the size of an egg, 2 tablespoons of flour, the whole mixed in a saucepan and moistened with half a glass of boiling milk, you obtain, after a few minutes of cooking while stirring with a spoon, a flowing paste; add to it 3 egg yolks and 2 anchovies passed through a sieve, work it a few minutes more to thicken it and pour it onto a plate to cool.
Clean a few well-desalted anchovies and make fillets of them.
With puff pastry (see the recipe), make two sheets or strips, 35 to 40 centimetres long and 12 wide: arrange crosswise on one of these strips the prepared filling in strands the thickness of the little finger, up to 3 centimetres from the edges of the strip; the same distance should exist between each strand. Place on this filling an anchovy fillet; moisten with a brush the strips of pastry that separate them, as well as the ends. Apply the second sheet on top; press between the fillets to seal these sheets well and then divide into as many pieces or allumettes as there are fillets. Glaze with beaten egg and arrange on a moistened baking sheet to cook in a hot oven.
Small Provençal glossary for this recipe
Reboul writes in French: no Provençal word appears in this recipe, apart from the dish's name itself. The table below gives the Provençal equivalents of the words used, in mistralian spelling, translated by Lingua Nostra. Each form is attested in our Provençal-English dictionary; click to open the entry.
| Provençal | English |
|---|---|
| burre | butter |
| farino | flour |
| la | milk |
| jaune | egg yolk |
| anchoio | anchovy |
| sedas | sieve |
| past | puff pastry |
| abaisso | sheet (of pastry) |
| farço | filling |
| daura | to glaze |
Source: Jean-Baptiste Reboul, La Cuisinière provençale, Marseille, 1909, recipe no. 54, page 36. Public domain. Transcription, formatting and Provençal glossary by Lingua Nostra.