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Sauce

Espagnole Sauce

A cold sauce made with egg yolks, cream, gelatin, and seasoned chicken stock, served over cooked meat and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Espagnole Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Make a white sauce.

  2. Beat the egg yolks slightly and dilute with cream.

  3. Dissolve gelatin in hot chicken stock.

  4. Mix the gelatin mixture with the white sauce.

Coat and serve

  1. When cool, dip pieces of cooked chicken, veal, or lamb in the sauce.

  2. When cold, dip again for another coating.

  3. Serve very cold on lettuce leaves and garnish with olives.

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. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Cream + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness and a smooth, velvety texture.
Gelatin
Sets as the sauce cools, so the coating holds on the meat when cold.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the flavor of the sauce.
Chicken stock
Provides the savory liquid base and dissolves the gelatin.

The step that matters

Dipping the meat at the right temperature. Gelatin sets as it cools. If the sauce is still warm, the coating runs off the meat. If it has already set too firmly, it goes thick and uneven, so dip when the sauce is cool and thickening but still fluid.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, gelatin, chicken, olive, 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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