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Sauce

Poivrade Sauce

A peppered sauce made with butter, Mirepoix, vinegar, Marinade, Espagnole, and finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Poivrade Sauce

Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Poivrade Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Heat the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the Mirepoix.

  3. Fry the vegetables until well browned.

  4. Moisten with vinegar and Marinade.

  5. Reduce to two-thirds.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add the Espagnole Sauce.

  2. Cook for 45 minutes.

  3. Add crushed peppercorns ten minutes before straining.

  4. Pass the sauce through a strainer, pressing the aromatics.

  5. Add another ½ cup of Marinade.

  6. Remove scum while simmering for 15 minutes.

  7. Strain again through a sieve.

  8. Finish with 2 ounces of butter before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Vinegar + saucetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,844 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Mirepoix
Browned diced vegetables that build the deep, savoury flavour base of the sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Provides the thickened brown sauce body that the reduced liquid is finished into.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens and balances the rich, sweet notes of the browned vegetables.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and enriches the sauce's flavour and mouthfeel when finished in.

The step that matters

Fry the vegetables until well browned. Browning the mirepoix develops deep, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale vegetables leave the sauce tasting flat and underdeveloped, so the colour should be deep before liquid is added.

“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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