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A LA Poulette

A stew of calf tails cooked with vegetables, spices, broth, mushrooms, and a black truffle garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,053 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

Also mentioned in the method: scallop

Directions

Prepare the tails

  1. Scald the calf's tails with the skin on, then cut them into joints.

  2. Parboil the joints in water for 5 minutes, then immerse in cold water.

  3. Drain the tails on a napkin, trim them, and place in a stewpan.

Stew

  1. Add the carrot, onion, parsley, cloves, mace, and peppercorns.

  2. Moisten with broth or water, adding salt if using water, and boil gently for about 1 hour.

Arrange and serve

  1. Once cooked, drain the tails, trim neatly, and arrange in a pyramidal form in a croustade.

  2. Pour over a rich sauce à la poulette with the mushrooms.

  3. Garnish with fluted scallops of red tongue and a glazed black truffle on top.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Mushroom + truffletop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Clove + macetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,916 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together21,599 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Calves' tails
Main body of the dish; long simmering turns the connective tissue tender and gelatinous.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the rich sauce that coats the tails.
Black truffle
Contributes a concentrated, aromatic earthy flavour as the finishing garnish.
Broth or water
Liquid that gently cooks the tails and carries flavour from the aromatics.

The step that matters

Gentle boiling of the tails. Boiling gently rather than vigorously keeps the meat tender and intact. Strong agitation breaks the joints apart and makes the tough connective tissue cook unevenly.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsley, clove, mace, mushroom, truffle):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsley, clove, mace, mushroom, truffle. 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.

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