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Sauce Poivrade

A French brown sauce with carrot, turnip, onion, shallot, garlic, thyme, parsley, bay leaf, claret, and brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 Poivrade

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the carrot, turnip, onion, shallot, cloves, thyme, parsley, bay leaf, salt, and peppercorns.

  3. Fry until browned, stirring constantly.

  4. Gradually add the claret and brown sauce.

  5. Simmer gently for 10 minutes, skimming off any scum.

  6. Strain the sauce and serve hot.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that softens the vegetables and carries the aromatic flavours into the sauce.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body as it fries and releases its flavour into the sauce.
Onion
Browns during frying, adding savoury depth and sweetness to the sauce.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour that balances the richness of the brown sauce.
Brown sauce
Forms the base of the sauce, providing body, colour and savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Fry until browned, stirring constantly. Browning the vegetables develops deep flavour through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Constant stirring prevents the onion and shallot from scorching, which would leave a bitter taste in the finished sauce.

Swap the shallot

The recipe marks shallot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, turnip, onion, clove, thyme, parsley):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotthe original
  4. Okrafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, turnip, onion, clove, thyme, parsley. 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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