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Poivrade Sauce

A vegetable sauce with carrot, onion, garlic, thyme, leek, tomato, ham, and herbs, simmered with butter, flour, vinegar, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Poivrade Sauce

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Poivrade Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare, clean and chop the vegetables.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the vegetables and minced ham in the butter.

  2. Add the vinegar and boil for a short time.

  3. Stir in the flour, herbs, and peppercorns tied in a piece of muslin.

  4. Add 1 pint of stock made from the essence.

  5. Season to taste.

Simmer and strain

  1. Simmer, stirring continuously, for about 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the muslin bag.

  3. Strain the sauce through a tammy.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Thyme + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling in the hot liquid to give body.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the fried vegetables and gives the sauce richness.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the rich, savoury flavours.
Liebig company's extract
Adds concentrated meaty savouriness that deepens the sauce's flavour.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, building the base flavour of the sauce.
Tinned tomato
Contributes acidity and body that round out the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer, stirring continuously, after adding the flour. Flour-thickened sauces can lump or scorch on the base of the pan if left unstirred. Constant stirring keeps the starch dispersed so it thickens smoothly and the sauce tastes clean rather than burnt.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, clove, garlic, thyme, leek, flour):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, clove, garlic, thyme, leek, flour. 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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