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Carrots “a LA Poulette.”

A French-style carrot dish cooked in a butter, flour, and stock sauce with egg yolks and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Carrots “a LA Poulette.”

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Scrape, wash, and scald the carrots.

  2. Cut them into slices.

  3. Boil the carrots in hot water with a lump of butter until cooked.

  4. Drain the carrots.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a pan, blend butter and flour with pepper and salt over the fire.

  2. Add white stock, egg yolks, and a squeeze of lemon to the mixture.

  3. Toss the carrots in the sauce without boiling, and serve.

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

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

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Carrots
Form the main body of the dish, giving sweetness and a tender texture when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, forming the base of the sauce with flour.
Flour
Thickens the butter into a roux that gives the sauce body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Toss the carrots in the sauce without boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the sauce boils, the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

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