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Sauce Poivrade

A French onion sauce with vinegar, stock, and spices, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sauce Poivrade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the minced onion in butter until yellow.

  2. Add the vinegar and boil until reduced.

  3. Stir in the gravy or stock, parsley, cloves, pepper, and salt; boil for 1 minute.

  4. Mix the flour with 1 teaspoon of butter and stir into the sauce.

  5. Boil for 10 minutes, then strain and skim.

Serve

  1. Serve with broiled or sautéed meats.

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

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Softened in butter, it adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the sauce.
Vinegar
Its acidity sharpens the sauce and balances the richness of the gravy.
Gravy or stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and supplies savory body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it a smoother, fuller body.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the sauce. Flour added directly to hot liquid can clump; mixing it with butter first coats the particles so they disperse evenly and thicken smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, vinegar, parsley, clove, pepper, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, parsley, clove, pepper, 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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