Provençal recipe

Salt cod Catalan style

Recipe no. 80 Reboul, 1909 Fish

Recipe no. 80 from Jean-Baptiste Reboul's La Cuisinière provençale (1909), page 49.

Ingredients

Preparation

  1. Sauce basePut 3 or 4 tablespoons of oil and a large chopped onion in a saucepan. Let it brown lightly, then add a chopped tomato and 2 chopped cloves of garlic with a sprig of parsley and a chili pepper.
  2. Cooking the salt codThe salt cod having been well desalted, scaled and cut into square pieces, place it in the saucepan. Pour over it lukewarm water, just enough to cover it, and let it cook briskly like a bouillabaisse.
  3. PlatingWhen the liquid has reduced by three quarters, arrange the pieces of salt cod on a dish and pour the whole contents of the saucepan over them. Check the seasoning and correct as needed.

Reboul's text

Put 3 or 4 tablespoons of oil and a large chopped onion in a saucepan; once this is lightly browned, add a chopped tomato, then 2 cloves of garlic, also chopped, with a sprig of parsley and a chili pepper.

The salt cod having been well desalted, scaled and cut into square pieces, place it in the saucepan; pour over it lukewarm water, just enough to cover it, and let it cook briskly like a bouillabaisse.

When the liquid has reduced by three quarters, arrange the pieces of salt cod on a dish and pour the whole contents of the saucepan, that is, the sauce, over them. It goes without saying that the seasoning should be checked and corrected as needed, depending on how salty the cod is.

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
òlioil
ceboonion
toumàtitomato
aietgarlic
juvertparsley
pimentounchili pepper
merlussosalt cod
casseirolosaucepan
aigowater
besusclato brown

Source: Jean-Baptiste Reboul, La Cuisinière provençale, Marseille, 1909, recipe no. 80, page 49. Public domain. Transcription, formatting and Provençal glossary by Lingua Nostra.