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Allemand Sauce

A savory sauce made from ham, poultry trimmings, shallots, garlic, bay leaf, tarragon, stock, coulis, citrus juice, cayenne, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Allemand Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew pan, combine ham, poultry trimmings, shallots, garlic, bay leaf, tarragon, and stock.

  2. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Add enough coulis to achieve desired sauce consistency and boil for a few minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve back into the stew pan.

Finish and season

  1. Heat the sauce and squeeze in the juice of the Seville orange or lemon.

  2. Season with cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt if needed.

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. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Poultry trimmings
Contribute savoury meat flavour and body to the stock-based sauce base.
Coulis
Thickens the sauce to the desired consistency.
Shallots
Add a mild aromatic sweetness that rounds out the sauce.
Seville orange or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Boil briefly after adding coulis. Coulis thickens the sauce as it reduces and binds, so the sauce must be boiled only long enough to reach the desired consistency. Overboiling can over-thicken it, while too little boiling leaves the starch unhydrated and the sauce thin and pasty.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, shallot, clove, garlic, tarragon, pepper):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, shallot, clove, garlic, tarragon, pepper. 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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