Skip to main content
Sauce

Espagnole Sauce

A cold sauce of egg yolks, cream, gelatin, and hot chicken stock, served with cooked meat on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,580 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Espagnole Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Make a white sauce.

  2. Beat the egg yolks slightly.

  3. Dilute the beaten yolks with the cream.

  4. Dissolve the gelatin in the hot chicken stock.

  5. Mix the gelatin mixture with the white sauce.

Coat and serve

  1. When cool, dip pieces of cooked chicken, veal, or lamb in the sauce.

  2. When cold, dip again for another coating.

  3. Serve very cold on lettuce leaves and garnish with olives.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Cream + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and help thicken it as they set with gentle heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Granulated gelatin
Sets the sauce so it firmly clings to the meat as it chills.
Chicken stock
Carries savory flavor and dissolves the gelatin evenly.

The step that matters

Dipping when cool, then again when cold. Gelatin sets as the sauce cools. Dipping while the sauce is still too warm lets the coating slide off, while waiting too long can leave it thick and lumpy. Timing each dip keeps an even, smooth coat.

Flavor stand-ins for the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, gelatin, chicken, olive, pepper):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, gelatin, chicken, olive, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

More espagnole sauce recipes

with Wine 4 See all 64 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes