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Poulette Sauce

A light chicken stock-based sauce flavored with onion, carrot, celery, lemon, egg yolk, cream, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Poulette Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine chicken stock, onion, carrot, celery, salt, and pepper in a saucepan and cook until well flavored.

  2. Just before serving, stir in lemon juice, diluted egg yolk, cream, and chopped parsley.

  3. Cook the mixture over hot water for about five minutes, stirring gently.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce as it gently heats and adds richness.
Cream
Adds fat and silkiness, softening the sauce's texture.
Chicken stock
Forms the flavorful liquid base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture over hot water for about five minutes, stirring gently.. Egg yolk thickens when heated but scrambles if it gets too hot. Gentle heat over hot water and constant gentle stirring keep the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, carrot, celery, pepper, lemon, egg, cream):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, celery, pepper, lemon, egg, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

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