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Poivrade Sauce

A savory sauce made with onion, shallot, butter, herbs, and beef or veal gravy, thickened with flour and butter, finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Poivrade Sauce

Why it works: Clove and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,437 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Poivrade Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat butter in a quart saucepan.

  2. Sauté minced onion, shallot, optional garlic, cloves, herbs, and basil for a few minutes.

  3. Add the beef or veal gravy (or warm water) and vinegar. Skim the mixture.

  4. Strain the mixture well.

Finish the sauce

  1. Thicken the sauce with flour and butter.

  2. Squeeze in the lemon juice.

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. Clove + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + basiltop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, building the flavour base of the sauce.
Beef or veal gravy
Provides the liquid and savoury body that forms the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce, giving it body when cooked with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while sautéing and enriches the thickened sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens and balances the savoury gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked in fat before or as it meets the liquid, otherwise it stays lumpy and tastes raw. Cooking it briefly lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the basil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, shallot, clove, beef, vinegar, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, shallot, clove, beef, vinegar, flour. 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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