Home › The Principles of Cookery › ROYANS, EROILED (a Bordeaux recipe)
ROYANS, EROILED (a Bordeaux recipe)
Take the fish, wipe them with a cloth, squeeze firmly the tip of the tail. Sprinkle salt over them, and place them on a gridiron to broil over a brisk fire. As soon as the undermost side begins to whiten, turn the royans, and two minutes after send them to table. Fresh butter should be served separately.
A three-line Bordeaux method for fresh sardines that depends entirely on very high heat and very short cooking. Everything else is seasoning.
- What a royan isRoyans are fresh sardines (pilchards) of the sort landed at Royan, at the mouth of the Gironde — small fish, cooked whole. Substitute fresh sardines or, at a pinch, small fresh anchovies or sprats; tinned sardines will not work here.
- The tail squeezePressing firmly at the tail appears to be a way of expressing the gut contents so the fish need not be slit. The recipe gives no scaling or gutting step: the fish seem to go on the fire whole, wiped rather than cleaned.
- A brisk fireDirect, fierce heat — a charcoal grill at its hottest, or a gas grill/broiler fully preheated with the fish two or three inches from the element. Sardines are oily and will flare; a hot cast-iron grill pan is the tidier indoor option.
- GridironThe 19th-century gridiron was a set of parallel iron bars over open coals. Oil the bars, or use a fish cage, or the skin will weld to the metal and the fish will tear when turned.
- TimingThe recipe times only the second side: two minutes after turning, it goes to table. The first side is judged by eye, until the underside begins to whiten. Cook until the flesh at the backbone is just opaque; longer and the oil renders out and the fish dries.
- SaltThe recipe salts the fish and puts them straight on the fire; salting shortly before grilling keeps the skin dry when it meets the heat. Coarse salt is the usual choice for this kind of grilling.
- ServingFresh butter passed separately is the whole sauce — cold, unsalted, allowed to melt on the hot fish. Lemon is a reasonable addition.
Royan is the port at the mouth of the Gironde, downstream from Bordeaux, and its name attached itself to the small sardines landed there. Recipes of this kind belong to the coast rather than the kitchen: fresh sardines spoil within hours in warm weather, and before refrigeration they were eaten within sight of the boats, grilled over coals on the quay or in the yard. The page carries only the parenthetical "a Bordeaux recipe", and the entry keeps the local logic intact no flour, no sauce, no gutting knife, just fire, salt and butter.