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Carrots a LA Poulette

A creamy carrot dish with butter, flour, stock, cream, lemon, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Carrots a LA Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Cover the carrots with boiling water and let them stand for five minutes.

  2. Drain the carrots.

  3. Cook them in a small quantity of boiling salted water until soft.

  4. Drain again.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt 3 tablespoons of butter.

  2. Add 3 tablespoons of flour.

  3. Stir constantly while gradually pouring in 1 cup of white stock and ½ cup of cream.

  4. Add the cooked carrots.

  5. Add ½ teaspoon of lemon juice.

  6. Season with salt and pepper.

  7. Once thoroughly heated, stir in the slightly beaten egg yolks.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

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

  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

Butter
Melts with the flour to form a roux that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and stock mixture into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds savory flavor.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich and thicken the sauce when stirred in while heated.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks once the sauce is thoroughly heated. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat, but if the sauce boils after they are added they can scramble and turn grainy. Keep the heat moderate and stir constantly.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, lemon, egg, pepper):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, lemon, egg, pepper. 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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