Laura the Gastronaut > Julia Child > Fish > Fish Filets Poached in White Wine; Cream & Egg Yolk Sauce

Fish Filets Poached in White Wine with Cream and Egg Yolk Sauce

May 1, 2020 | Updated August 29, 2023 | Laura

✽ Recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. I | Julia Child ✽

Julia Child Recipe 100 | 428 recipes to go!

✽ Filets de Poisson Gratinés, à la Parisienne [Fish Filets Poached in White Wine; Cream and Egg Yolk Sauce], p. 211

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✽ Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. I was written by Julia Child who co-authored with Simone Beck & Louisette Bertholle and was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1961.

✽ You can buy Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I which contains these recipes here. (affiliate link)

The purpose of this Julia Child section of my blog is to document my journey of learning how to cook. To show my successes, my failures, and what I learned along the way.

Since I didn't create these recipes (if only!), I do not post exact amounts of ingredients or word-for-word instructions. If any of these recipes spark your interest, I highly recommend you buy Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (affiliate link). It's a great investment and learning tool and contains hundreds of classic recipes.

I hope that you enjoy reading my thoughts, learn something new, and leave inspired to try a new recipe. Bon appétit!

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✽ Butter Count: +5.5 TB

✽ Cost: $20.38 [~$3.40 per serving]

Check out the total Julia Child butter count & cost here!

→ Looking for a different Julia Child recipe? Here's a list of all of the completed and pending Mastering the Art of French Cooking recipes!

By this point, you are probably tired of me telling you that almost every recipe I make is amazing. Sure, I get it. But these recipes really are so delicious. There’s a reason Julia is so famous!

With that said, please don’t ignore this recipe. This recipe will bring a perfectly cooked fish with an AMAZING sauce right to your table. Also, it is one of the fastest recipes so far making it easy to prepare even on a week night.

Honestly, I want to start putting this sauce on everything- breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Maybe put it in a bowl and eat it straight out of there with a spoon? Yeah, I’d even consider that. Get the point? This sauce is life-changing.

Looking for more Julia Child seafood recipes to read about?

→ Check out all of the fish recipes that I've completed so far!

In this recipe, you will make a velouté. Fancy, right? This is the result from combining the poaching liquid with a flour and butter roux. The velouté is then mixed with cream and egg yolks to make a parisienne.

✽ Step 1: Poach Fish

As for poaching the fish, it is poached exactly the same way as the previous fish recipes so I will not write out all the details again.

After poaching, the liquid is boiled down to one cup.

✽ Step 2: Make Sauce

Next, melted butter is blended with flour and cooked slowly for about two minutes while stirring. It is taken off the heat and the poaching liquid and milk is beaten in. All of this goodness is boiled for one additional minute.

Now egg yolks and cream are mixed together. One cup of the hot liquid is beaten in by droplets. This is important because you do not want your yolks to scramble. This is called tempering your eggs which basically means you are slowly going to raise the temperature of your eggs so they do not scramble.

After they are tempered, you can add the rest of the hot liquid. Now set all of it over moderate-high heat and boil and stir for one more minute. Add more cream until the liquid is thin enough to “coat a spoon nicely.” Season with salt, white pepper, and lemon juice and strain.

✽ Step 3: Broil & Serve

The sauce is poured over the fish and topped with Swiss cheese and butter. It is all reheated slowly on the stove until simmering and placed under the broiler until you get a nice browned top.

After writing all of this, I really want this dish again. This recipe is what I think of when I hear ‘Julia Child’- rich, delicious, buttery, flavorful. At first, I was a little sad that my 100th recipe was not a looker. But by the time I had taken a bite, I did not care. I knew that this recipe was something great, and I am so happy it was the recipe that took me into three digits.

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Edit: These pictures are.. not great. I apologize. When making these early recipes I was working in an extremely tiny kitchen that had pratically zero counter space and very poor lighting. My only saving grace was that somebody once had one of those pull-out cutting boards installed. What a life saver.

I was also in pharmacy school, getting minimal sleep, working for free, completely broke, didn't know the first thing about taking photos, and knew practically nothing about French cooking (or cooking in general for that matter).

I've debated taking these old posts down but decided to keep them up because they are all a part of my journey. These photos and my written struggles remind me how far I've come. I can pretty much make some of these base recipes in my sleep now!

You don't need fancy equipment or the finest ingredients to enjoy cooking and make good food. As one of my favorite cartoon characters, Ms. Frizzle, says, "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!"

*This blog, Laura the Gastronaut, and this post were/are not endorsed or supported by Julia Child or The Julia Child Foundation.

Category: Julia Child, Fish Cuisine: French
Keywords: julia child fish recipes, how to poach fish, french poached fish recipe, sauce parisienne recipe

✽ Did you make this recipe too?
→ Let me know by leaving a comment below and sharing on Instagram. Tag @laurathegastronaut and hashtag it #laurathegastronaut.

More Fish Recipes:

✽ Filets de Poisson a la Bretonne (poached fish filets made with a julienne of vegetables)
✽ Fish Filets Poached in White Wine with Mushrooms (the mushrooms make this poached fish even tastier)
✽ Sole a la Dieppoise (fish filets made with mussels and shrimp)
→ Check out all of the completed Julia Child fish recipes!

✽ You can find this recipe and all the other Julia Child recipes I make in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I (affiliate link). Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. I was written by Julia Child who co-authored with Simone Beck & Louisette Bertholle and was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1961.

✽ Check out my Julia Child Recipe Checklist to see a list of all my completed and pending recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking!

Bon appétit!

May 1, 2020 by Laura Ehlers

*This Fish Filets Poached in White Wine; Cream and Egg Yolk Sauce blog post may contain Amazon affiliate links. These link to products that I personally use and recommend. If you purchase anything using my links, it will not cost you anything. It will though give laurathegastronaut.com some financial support which helps me keep this blog running. Thank you for reading my blogs and your continued support.