Provençal recipe

Poached sea bass with Genoese sauce

Recipe no. 64 Reboul, 1909 Fish

Recipe no. 64 from Jean-Baptiste Reboul's La Cuisinière provençale (1909), page 42.

Ingredients

Preparation

  1. PoachingButter the bottom of a wide, shallow saucepan; put on it a few slices of carrot and onion, a sprig of parsley, of thyme, a bay leaf, 2 cloves of garlic and 2 chopped anchovies; lay the cleaned but not incised sea bass on top; season with salt and pepper, add liquid with 2 glasses of red wine and as much broth or water; cover and let it cook.
  2. Genoese sauceSeparately, put in a saucepan a piece of butter the size of an egg, melt it; add a spoonful of flour and let it brown lightly. When the sea bass is cooked, strain its cooking liquid into this flour, stirring briskly with a wooden spoon, or better still with a kitchen whisk; bring to the boil and move it off the heat; work into this sauce a further piece of butter the size of a walnut, the juice of a lemon, and pour it over the sea bass when serving, or send it separately in a sauceboat.

Reboul's text

Butter the bottom of a wide, shallow saucepan; put on it a few slices of carrot and onion, a sprig of parsley, of thyme, a bay leaf, 2 cloves of garlic and 2 chopped anchovies; lay the cleaned but not incised sea bass on top; season with salt and pepper, add liquid with 2 glasses of red wine and as much broth or water; cover and let it cook.

Separately, put in a saucepan a piece of butter the size of an egg, melt it; add a spoonful of flour and let it brown lightly. When the sea bass is cooked, strain its cooking liquid into this flour, stirring briskly with a wooden spoon, or better still with a kitchen whisk; bring to the boil and move it off the heat; work into this sauce a further piece of butter the size of a walnut, the juice of a lemon, and pour it over the sea bass when serving, or send it separately in a sauceboat.

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.

ProvençalEnglish
burrato butter
muiaadd liquid
bouiounbroth
rousbrowned
farinoflour
saussoGenoese sauce
fouitwhisk

Source: Jean-Baptiste Reboul, La Cuisinière provençale, Marseille, 1909, recipe no. 64, page 42. Public domain. Transcription, formatting and Provençal glossary by Lingua Nostra.