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Sauce Poinade

A brown stock sauce thickened with claret.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Sauce Poinade

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the brown stock, mixed herbs, parsley, bay leaf, thyme, and clove in a saucepan.

  2. Cook for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Reheat the strained stock and add the claret.

  5. Thicken the sauce slightly more than a standard brown sauce, as the claret will dilute it.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown stock
Forms the savoury base of the sauce and carries the flavour of the herbs.
Claret
Adds acidity and depth, and thins the sauce so it needs extra thickening.
Bay leaf
Infuses the stock with a subtle aromatic herbal flavour during cooking.

The step that matters

Thickening after adding the claret. Claret is mostly liquid and dilutes the stock, so the sauce will be thinner than a standard brown sauce unless it is thickened more before serving. Reducing or thickening to the right consistency is what gives the sauce body and lets it coat food properly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Fennelfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, thyme. 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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