Recipe no. 351 from Jean-Baptiste Reboul's La Cuisinière provençale (1909), page 170.
Ingredients
- thrushes
- butter
- truffles
- mushrooms
- madeira
- coulis sauce
Preparation
- Prepare the thrushesBone a dozen thrushes well plucked and singed. Lay out and fill as in the previous recipe.
- Close up the thrushesSew with thread to form a ball. Set a kept foot into each to imitate the stalk of a plum.
- CookBrown in butter and season. Once cooked, drain off the butter entirely. Add truffles and mushrooms.
- Finish the sauceDrizzle with madeira, reduce by half, moisten with coulis sauce, cook 5 minutes.
- DressArrange in a crown with feet outward, garnish the centre with truffles and mushrooms, sauce and serve.
Reboul's text
Bone a dozen thrushes well plucked and singed, as fresh as possible. Lay them out on the table and fill them as above; with thread and a small needle, sew them up giving them a nice round shape.
Set into each one of the feet that you will have kept and from which you will have cut the claw; this foot must imitate the stalk of the plum.
Put a piece of butter the size of an egg into a casserole and the thrushes to brown in it, season them; when they are cooked, drain off the butter entirely; add a dozen small truffles, as many mushroom caps, drizzle with half a glass of madeira, reduce by half and moisten with a large spoonful of coulis sauce.
Let it cook 5 minutes, then dress the thrushes in a crown on a platter with the feet outward, garnish the centre with the truffles and mushrooms and sauce the whole. Then serve.
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 |
|---|---|
| desoussa | to bone |
| reveni | to brown |
| assaboura | to season |
| agouta | to drain |
| arrousa | to drizzle |
| redurre | to reduce |
| bagna | to moisten |
| couire | to cook |
| dreissa | to dress |
Source: Jean-Baptiste Reboul, La Cuisinière provençale, Marseille, 1909, recipe no. 351, page 170. Public domain. Transcription, formatting and Provençal glossary by Lingua Nostra.