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Poivrade Sauce

A French sauce made with butter, onions, carrots, turnips, shallots, garlic, bay leaf, thyme, basil, flour, red wine, water, vinegar, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Poivrade Sauce

Why it works: Thyme and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,768 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Poivrade Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a stew pan.

  2. Add the onion, carrot, turnip, shallots, cloves, bay leaf, thyme, and basil.

  3. Cook while stirring until they begin to color.

  4. Sprinkle in the flour and mix well.

  5. Pour in the red wine and water, then add the vinegar, pepper, and salt.

  6. Boil for half an hour, then skim and strain the sauce.

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. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together202 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 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 as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Red wine
Adds depth, acidity and flavour to the sauce base.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness to the sauce.
Onion
Builds savoury sweetness and flavour as it browns slightly.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the wine.

The step that matters

Cook the vegetables until they begin to color. Light browning develops sweeter, deeper flavours through caramelisation. Pale vegetables give a flat sauce, while over-browning can make it bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, turnip, shallot, clove, thyme, basil):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, turnip, shallot, clove, thyme, basil. 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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