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Mushrooms, Poulette

A creamy mushroom sauce with lemon, flour, and egg yolks.

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

Cook the mushrooms

  1. In a saucepan, combine mushrooms, butter, lemon juice, and water.

  2. Cover and cook over medium heat until the mushrooms begin to boil.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a separate bowl, dilute flour in cold water and strain through a fine sieve.

  2. Once mushrooms boil, add the flour mixture to thicken.

  3. Cook slowly for 5 minutes.

  4. Add cream, egg yolks, and butter, and toss well off the heat.

  5. Serve immediately, garnished 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 body of the sauce and release liquid that combines with the butter and lemon.
Flour
Thickens the mushroom liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, adding body and a smooth finish.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and a glossy mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks and cream off the heat. Egg yolks begin to set around 70°C, so if the sauce is too hot when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Tossing them off the heat lets them thicken gently and evenly.

“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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