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Sauce

Poulette Sauce

A light sauce made from chicken stock, lemon, egg yolk, cream, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Poulette Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, heat the chicken stock seasoned with onion, carrot, celery, salt, and pepper.

  2. Just before serving, stir in the lemon juice, egg yolk diluted with cream, and chopped parsley.

  3. Cook the sauce over hot water for about five minutes, ensuring it does not boil.

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce as it gently heats, giving it a smooth, velvety body.
Chicken stock
Forms the savory liquid base that the rest of the sauce is built on.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sauce, and helps dilute the egg yolk for smooth mixing.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the cream and yolk.

The step that matters

Cook over hot water without boiling. Egg yolk thickens through gentle heat, but above about 70°C it begins to scramble and curdle. Keeping the sauce below a simmer over hot water lets it thicken smoothly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, lemon, egg, cream, pepper):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, lemon, egg, cream, 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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