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Sheep’s Trotters, ‘poulette’- Sauce

A stew of sheep's trotters simmered in poulette sauce, finished with egg yolks, lemon juice, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sheep’s Trotters, ‘poulette’- Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the trotters

  1. Singe the sheep's feet.

  2. Remove the shaggy part between the cleft of the foot.

  3. Refresh the trotters.

  4. Boil them in salted water for 5 hours.

  5. Drain the trotters.

  6. Remove the main bone from the trotters.

Braise and finish

  1. Place the trotters in a stewpan.

  2. Moisten the trotters with poulette sauce.

  3. Simmer in the sauce for 25 minutes.

  4. Skim the fat off the sauce.

  5. Thicken the sauce with diluted egg yolks.

  6. Finish the sauce with lemon juice and butter.

  7. Serve the stew.

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. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Sauce + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Sheep's feet (trotters)
Provide the gelatinous skin and connective tissue that give the stew its body and richness.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat, giving it a smooth, velvety texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its fat.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the sauce and gives it a smooth, glossy finish.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with diluted egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the sauce is too hot. Diluting them first and adding them off the boil lets them thicken smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, egg, butter. 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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