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Poivrade Sauce, Easily Made

A French sauce made with butter, onions, shallot, carrot, turnip, cloves, bay leaf, thyme, flour, pepper, salt, claret, vinegar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,476 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Poivrade Sauce, Easily Made

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce base

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the onions, shallot, carrot, turnip, cloves, bay leaf, and thyme.

  3. Stir constantly over gentle heat until lightly browned.

Simmer and serve

  1. Dredge the flour over the mixture and add pepper, salt, claret, vinegar, and water.

  2. Boil gently for 30 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together202 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 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

Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness and a rounded flavor to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavor that deepens the sauce as it reduces.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the browned vegetables.

The step that matters

Stir constantly until lightly browned. Over gentle heat the onions and vegetables can scorch on the bottom of the pan if left unattended, and scorched bits make the sauce taste bitter. Constant stirring lets the sugars brown evenly, adding color and depth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, shallot, carrot, turnip, clove, thyme, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, shallot, carrot, turnip, clove, thyme, 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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