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Poulette Sauce

A creamy French sauce made with butter, flour, stock, egg yolks, cream, parsley, mushrooms, lemon juice, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Poulette Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt 2½ ounces of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Mix 3 ounces of flour smoothly with the melted butter and stir for 3 minutes.

  3. Gradually add 1 pint of boiling stock, stirring continuously.

  4. Cook the sauce for 15 minutes, then remove from heat to cool slightly.

  5. Beat 2 egg yolks with 2 tablespoons of thick cream and mix into the sauce.

  6. Return the sauce to low heat and stir until it thickens, but do not let it boil.

  7. Add 1 tablespoon of chopped parsley, salt, pepper, and 12 prepared button mushrooms.

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. To prepare the mushrooms, remove the stalks and peel them.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the mushrooms with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and 1 tablespoon of water.

  3. Shake over heat for 1–2 minutes until they absorb the juice, then add 1 ounce of butter and cook for 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce into a serving dish and stir in the reserved piece of butter just before serving.

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

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds a rich, smooth flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot stock.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a sauce.
Egg yolks
Add richness and further thicken the sauce when gently heated.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.
Button mushrooms
Contribute earthy flavour and a tender texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, and if the sauce boils they can curdle and turn grainy. Keep it at low heat and stir until it thickens, without letting it boil.

“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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