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Poulette Sauce

A baked fish dish with a creamy sauce made from butter, flour, eggs, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Poulette Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until dissolved.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with the cream or milk, then stir the egg mixture into the butter mixture.

  4. Add the additional milk.

  5. Stir until thickened.

  6. Season with salt and pepper.

Make the fish mixture

  1. Melt the fresh butter in another saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour and cayenne pepper.

  3. Add the milk and sweet cream.

  4. Stir in the Anchovy sauce and salt.

  5. Let the mixture thicken.

  6. Remove from heat and combine with the shredded fish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Grease individual shells or a large pudding dish with butter.

  2. Line with fried bread crumbs.

  3. Fill the shells with the fish mixture.

  4. Sprinkle with more fried crumbs.

  5. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until brown.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, body-giving sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, giving it a creamy, pourable base.
Fish
Provides the main filling, giving the dish its flavour and bulk.

The step that matters

Let the mixture thicken before adding the fish. Flour needs to cook in the hot liquid until it swells and thickens; if the sauce is too thin, the filling will be watery and may not hold its shape when baked.

“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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