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Oysters a LA Poulette

Oysters à la Poulette is a sauce of butter, flour, bouillon, lemon, egg yolks, cream, and parsley served over cooked oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Oysters a LA Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Blend the butter and flour in a saucepan.

  2. Add the bouillon and stir until smooth.

  3. Season with salt, cayenne, and lemon juice.

  4. Beat the egg yolks with the cream and add to the sauce.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the oysters in their own liquor until the edges curl, then drain.

  2. Pour the sauce over the oysters and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the chopped parsley and serve immediately.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set gently with heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and bouillon into a smooth base for the sauce.
Oysters
Provide the main ingredient, cooked briefly until the edges curl.
Bouillon
Supplies the savory liquid that forms the body of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the sauce. Egg yolks can scramble if the sauce is too hot when they go in. Keeping the heat low and stirring while adding them lets the yolks thicken the sauce smoothly.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.