Skip to main content
Main

A LA Poulette

A stew of calf's tails simmered with vegetables, mushrooms, and truffle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,053 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: scallop

Directions

Prepare the tails

  1. Scald the calf's tails with the skin on.

  2. Cut the calf's tails into joints.

  3. Parboil the joints in water for 5 minutes.

  4. Immerse the joints in cold water.

  5. Drain the tails on a napkin.

  6. Trim the tails.

Stew

  1. Place the tails in a stewpan.

  2. Add the carrot, onion, parsley, cloves, mace, and peppercorns.

  3. Moisten the stew with broth or water.

  4. Add salt if using water.

  5. Boil gently for about 1 hour.

  6. Once cooked, drain the tails.

  7. Trim the tails neatly.

Serve

  1. Arrange the tails in a pyramidal form in a serving dish.

  2. Pour over a rich sauce containing the mushrooms.

  3. Garnish with fluted scallops of red tongue.

  4. Top with a glazed truffle 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Mushroom + truffletop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Clove + macetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,916 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together21,599 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

Calves' tails
Provide the main body of the dish, with gelatinous skin and meat that become tender when stewed.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and body to the rich sauce that is poured over the tails.
Large black truffle
Adds a strong, aromatic earthy flavour as the final finish on the dish.
Broth or water
Provides the liquid that gently cooks the tails and carries the flavour of the aromatics.

The step that matters

Boil gently for about 1 hour. A gentle simmer keeps the tails tender and the liquid clear; a hard boil toughens the meat and breaks up the tissue, so the tails can fall apart.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsley, clove, mace, mushroom, truffle):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsley, clove, mace, mushroom, truffle. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Illustration of Carrot SoupIllustrationCarrot Soup134 recipesIllustration of Mushroom SoupIllustrationMushroom Soup60 recipesIllustration of Tomato SoupIllustrationTomato Soup526 recipesIllustration of Brown BreadIllustrationBrown Bread461 recipes