Home › Vegetables › Mushrooms à La Poulette
Mushrooms à La Poulette
Stew the mushrooms in cream; remove from the fire and stir in the beaten yolks of two eggs. Return to the fire to let the eggs thicken; then serve at once.
A four-line sketch rather than a formula: Mrs. Fryer assumes you know that a poulette sauce is thickened with egg yolk and must never boil. Everything else has to be supplied.
- The hinge: do not let it boilOnce the yolks go in, the cream must stay below a simmer or the eggs will scramble and the sauce will break into curds and whey. Keep it around 170-180F, stirring constantly, until it coats the back of a spoon.
- Temper the yolksBeat the yolks in a bowl and whisk in a ladle of the hot cream before adding them to the pan. The recipe does take the pan off the fire first, which helps; even so, cold yolks dropped into hot cream are the quickest route to lumps.
- QuantitiesNone are given. Two yolks will thicken about a cup of cream, which is right for roughly a pound of mushrooms and serves four as a side.
- Mushroom preparationWipe rather than soak, trim the stems, and slice thickly. Mushrooms give off a good deal of liquid; if your pan looks watery, cook the mushrooms down in a little butter first and pour off the excess before the cream goes in, or the sauce will be thin.
- "Stew" means gentlyEight to ten minutes at a bare simmer in the cream should be about enough. The mushrooms should be tender and the cream slightly reduced before the yolks are added.
- Seasoning the book leaves outSalt and white pepper are needed, and a squeeze of lemon at the very end is characteristic of a poulette; a scrape of nutmeg is a common addition. The lemon goes in off the heat, since acid added to hot cream can curdle it.
- ServingDishes like this were sent out on toast points, in pastry shells or as a garnish for veal or chicken. It does not hold: the sauce tightens and separates on standing, which is why the original says serve at once.
À la poulette is one of the standard names of the French classical repertoire that American cookbooks absorbed wholesale in the late nineteenth century: a light sauce of stock or cream finished with egg yolks and lemon, most often met with mussels, tripe, sweetbreads or lamb feet. The name is generally traced to the diminutive of poule, hen, a nod to the eggs in the liaison rather than to any chicken in the dish. The extreme brevity is characteristic of Mrs. Fryer's presentation, which was aimed at cooks who already knew the technique and needed only the combination.