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Sauce

Poivrade Sauce

A vinegar-based sauce with shallots, anchovy, cayenne, and mustard, served cold with game or hot with roast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Poivrade Sauce

Why it works: Shallot and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Poivrade Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the chopped shallots and vinegar in a stewpan.

  2. Stew for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the veal consommé, anchovy, Cayenne pepper, salt, tomato glaze, cullis, mustard, bay leaf, lemon juice, and garlic.

  4. Simmer for 5 minutes.

  5. Strain through a fine sieve.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with cold game or hot with roast or grilled meats.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Shallots
Give a sharp, aromatic base that is softened and concentrated in the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the richer ingredients.
Veal consommé
Adds savoury depth and body from concentrated meat stock.
Tomato glaze
Adds concentrated tomato flavour, colour and sweetness.
Cullis
Thickens the sauce and adds rich body from its puréed base.

The step that matters

Strain through a fine sieve. Straining removes the shallot, bay leaf and anchovy solids, leaving a smooth sauce. Pressing the anchovy through a fine sieve first helps it dissolve evenly into the liquid.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, vinegar, veal, anchovy, pepper, mustard, lemon):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, vinegar, veal, anchovy, pepper, mustard, lemon. 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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