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Poulette Sauce
1 cup Veloute sauce 2 egg-yolks 1 cup cream Slowly add, with constant stirring, the Veloute to the egg-yolks, beat in the cream and reheat over hot water. Beat well and serve at once. It is improved by adding a little at a time, one tablespoon butter, the juice of half a lemon, a tablespoon of chopped parsley and a dash of nutmeg.
A classical velout\finished with an egg-and-cream liaison. Everything depends on keeping the heat low enough that the yolks thicken without setting.
- The hinge: never let it boilOnce the yolks go in, the sauce must not exceed about 180F or it will scramble into grains. "Reheat over hot water" means a bowl or the top of a double boiler set over water that is steaming but not bubbling.
- Temper the yolks properly"Slowly add, with constant stirring" is doing real work here. If the velout\bis warm, dribble it into the yolks a spoonful at a time until the mixture is warmed through before combining the rest; adding it all at once risks curdling the eggs.
- Velout\baseVelout\bbase -- A white roux, butter and flour in equal measure (roughly 1 to 2 tbsp of each per cup of liquid), cooked without colour and whisked with light chicken, veal or fish stock, then simmered until it coats a spoon. Match the stock to whatever the sauce will dress. The recipe itself gives no proportions for the velout\b
- Cream"Cream" in American books of this era generally meant what we would now call light or coffee cream, around 18 to 20 percent fat, rather than today's heavy cream. Heavy cream works and gives a richer, thicker result.
- ConsistencyA full cup of cream to a cup of velout yields a distinctly pourable sauce. If you want it thicker, reduce the velout\ffirst or hold back part of the cream.
- Add the lemon last, off the heatAcid added to a hot dairy-and-egg emulsion encourages it to break. Stir in the butter a piece at a time, then the lemon juice, parsley and nutmeg once the pan is off the burner.
- Yield and servingAbout 2 to 2 1/4 cups. It is a serve-at-once sauce, as the recipe says: it will not hold well on the stove and is difficult to reheat without separating.