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Mushrooms , Poulette

A creamy mushroom sauce with lemon, flour, cream, and egg yolks, served hot and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Mushrooms , Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Clean and wash the mushrooms.

  2. Combine mushrooms, butter, lemon juice, and water in a saucepan and cover the saucepan.

  3. Cook over medium heat until the mushrooms begin to boil.

Make the sauce

  1. Dilute the flour in some cold water.

  2. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  3. Add the flour mixture and thicken the gravy.

  4. Cook slowly for 5 minutes.

  5. Add the cream, egg yolks, and butter.

  6. Mix well off the heat.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

  2. Garnish with chopped parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

  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

Mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish and release liquid that flavours the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth gravy as it heats.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a silky, rich texture.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and scramble if the sauce is too hot, leaving a grainy texture. Mixing them in off the heat, after the sauce has cooled slightly, keeps it smooth and silky.

“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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