Recipe no. 130 from Jean-Baptiste Reboul's La Cuisinière provençale (1909), page 70.
Ingredients
- mussels
- clams
- cockles
- mussel liquid
- sea urchin puree
- shells
Preparation
- MixturePrepare a mixture exactly as described for spiny lobster shells, keeping the sauce a little thicker; add to it a dozen cooked and well cleaned mussels and as many clams and cockles. You will have worked into the sauce, alongside the milk, some of the liquid from the mussels, cockles and clams.
- Sea urchins and browningLastly, before filling your shells, work into the mixture 2 or 3 tablespoons of sea urchin puree, and brown au gratin like the others. Here is why we advise keeping the sauce a little thicker than for the other shells: since the addition of these few spoonfuls of sea urchin puree thins it noticeably, if it were too thin it would spill from the shells while browning, which would look rather unappetising.
Reboul's text
Prepare a mixture exactly as described for spiny lobster shells, keeping the sauce a little thicker; add to it a dozen cooked and well cleaned mussels and as many clams and cockles.
You will have worked into the sauce, alongside the milk, some of the liquid from the mussels, cockles and clams.
Lastly, before filling your shells, work into the mixture 2 or 3 tablespoons of sea urchin puree, and brown au gratin like the others.
Here is why we advise keeping the sauce a little thicker than for the other shells: since the addition of these few spoonfuls of sea urchin puree thins it noticeably, if it were too thin it would spill from the shells while browning, which would look rather unappetising.
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 |
|---|---|
| closco | shells |
| oursin | sea urchins |
| rabina | to brown au gratin |
Source: Jean-Baptiste Reboul, La Cuisinière provençale, Marseille, 1909, recipe no. 130, page 70. Public domain. Transcription, formatting and Provençal glossary by Lingua Nostra.