Skip to main content
Sauce

Sauce À LA Poulette

A thin white sauce made with chicken broth, butter, flour, egg yolks, mushrooms, onion pulp, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and mushroom match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 4,171 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine chicken broth, butter, flour, pepper, and salt in a saucepan and stir well.

  2. Cook for 15 minutes to create a thin white sauce.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Add the strained yolks of three eggs one by one, stirring continuously.

Finish the sauce

  1. Finish the sauce with a pat of butter.

  2. Add chopped mushrooms.

  3. Incorporate the pulp of simmered Bombay onions.

  4. Add a spoonful of cream.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Chicken + mushroomtop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together12,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Butter + milktop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Chicken + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,808 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Mushroom + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it body and a smooth, rich texture.
Flour
Thickens the broth and butter into a white sauce base.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a silky mouthfeel.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries its savory flavor.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and savory depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Yolks can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Remove the pan from heat first and add the yolks one at a time while stirring constantly, so they blend in smoothly and thicken gently.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Asparagusbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, pepper, egg, mushroom, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Illustration of Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)IllustrationWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesIllustration of Caper SauceIllustrationCaper Sauce180 recipesIllustration of Brown SauceIllustrationBrown Sauce141 recipesIllustration of Dutch SauceIllustrationDutch Sauce74 recipes