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Shad Roe a LA Poulette

A sauce of butter, lemon, egg, cream, and flour served over simmered shad roes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Shad Roe a LA Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roe

  1. Simmer the shad roes in slightly salted water with vinegar and a slice of lemon for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter and add the juice of half a lemon.

  2. Beat the egg yolk with the cream and flour until smooth.

  3. Whisk the egg mixture gently into the warm butter, keeping it warm until it thickens (do not boil).

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the shad roes, sprinkle with chopped parsley, and serve.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Roe + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together243 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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

Shad roes
Form the main body of the dish, with a delicate, tender texture when gently simmered.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as it gently warms, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Butter
Provides richness and a silky fat base for the sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sauce into a smooth texture.
Flour
Helps stabilise the egg and cream mixture so it thickens more evenly.

The step that matters

Keeping the sauce below boiling while it thickens. Egg yolks scramble when overheated, so the sauce can curdle if it boils. Warming it gently lets the yolk proteins thicken it smoothly.

“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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