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Mussels a LA Poulette

A mussel dish cooked with butter, flour, parsley, and a sauce of mussel liquor, egg yolk, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mussels a LA Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mussels

  1. Wash the fresh mussels and place them in a pot over heat without water until they open.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the mussels from their shells and place them in a saucepan.

  2. Add butter, flour, chopped parsley, salt, and pepper to the mussels.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the mussel liquor.

  4. In a bowl, beat the egg yolk with vinegar and add it to the mussels.

Serve

  1. Serve the mussels in their shells or on a dish, pouring the sauce over them.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Fresh mussels
Provide the main protein and the briny liquor that flavours the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and mussel liquor into a stable, spoonable sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce as it sets gently with the warm liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich egg and butter sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and vinegar. Egg yolk thickens when heated gently but can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Keep the mixture warm rather than boiling so it turns smooth and creamy instead of curdled.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

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