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Carrots, Poulette Style

Carrots cooked in a beurre blanc-like sauce of butter, flour, lemon juice, egg yolks, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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, Poulette Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Wash and scrape the carrots, then scald them in boiling water for a few moments.

  2. Drain and slice the carrots, then place them in a saucepan with boiling water and a bit of butter.

  3. Boil the carrots until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, melt 1 teaspoon of butter and add 2 teaspoons of flour; cook for a few moments.

  2. Stir in the lemon juice, egg yolks, salt, pepper, and rich stock.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the cooked carrots and toss over the heat to warm without boiling.

  2. Serve on a dish.

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. Lemon + peppertop 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
Provide the main body and sweetness of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce and carrots.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by forming a roux with the butter.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they gently set with heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the richness of the butter and yolks.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks without boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gentle coagulation. If the sauce gets too hot or boils after the yolks go in, they can scramble and turn grainy, so the sauce should be warmed gently and kept below boiling.

Swap the carrot

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

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

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