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Mussels a LA Poulette

A mussel dish cooked with butter, flour, parsley, salt, pepper, vinegar, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mussels a LA Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Open and shell

  1. Wash the mussels and place them in a pot over heat without water until they open.

  2. Remove the mussels from their shells and place them in a saucepan.

Make the sauce

  1. Add butter, flour, chopped parsley, salt, and pepper to the mussels.

  2. Moisten with a little of their own liquor.

  3. In a bowl, beat the egg yolk with vinegar and add to the mussels.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, optionally leaving mussels in their shells and pouring the sauce over them.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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

Mussels
Form the main body of the dish, with their own liquor adding moisture and savory flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the warm liquid.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, helping it cling to the mussels.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and vinegar mixture. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat, but if the sauce gets too hot it can curdle or scramble. Add the mixture off the heat or over very low heat, stirring constantly, so the sauce turns smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, vinegar, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, vinegar, egg. 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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