Provençal recipe

Fried sardines

Recipe no. 96 Reboul, 1909 Fish

Recipe no. 96 from Jean-Baptiste Reboul's La Cuisinière provençale (1909), page 55.

Ingredients

Preparation

  1. PreparationWipe the sardines without gutting them, skewer them six by six, passing a skewer through their eyes; pass them through milk on a plate, then through flour.
  2. CookingPlunge them into boiling frying fat; they should move about freely and swim in the oil; 3 minutes are enough to cook them. Take them out, sprinkle with fine salt and serve surrounded with lemon slices.

Reboul's text

Wipe them without gutting them, skewer them six by six, passing a skewer through their eyes; pass them through milk on a plate, then through flour.

Plunge them into boiling frying fat; they should move about freely and swim in the oil; 3 minutes are enough to cook them. Take them out then, sprinkle with fine salt and serve surrounded with lemon slices.

It goes without saying that to serve sardines without removing their innards, they must be of the very first freshness. At the slightest doubt they should be gutted.

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
embrouchato skewer
brouchetoskewer
passato pass through milk
farinoflour
fregiduroboiling frying fat
saupicato sprinkle
saufine salt

Source: Jean-Baptiste Reboul, La Cuisinière provençale, Marseille, 1909, recipe no. 96, page 55. Public domain. Transcription, formatting and Provençal glossary by Lingua Nostra.