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Poulette Sauce
2 tablespoonfuls but-1 teaspoonful salt ter 2 tablespoonfuls flour 1 cup sweet cream 1 cup white stock teaspoonful white pepper 1 egg yolk A little nutmeg 1 tablespoonful lemon-juice Melt butter, add flour and seasonings; when bubbling stir in white stock. Make the white stock from any bones or odd bits of chicken or veal by covering with cold water, add a little chopped celery or carrot and one bay leaf, simmer slowly for two hours, then strain. When thickened, add slowly the beaten yolk, cream, and nutmeg. Heat all together, but do not boil. Just before serving add the lemon-juice carefully. Especially acceptable with warmed-over chicken or veal.
A classic egg-and-cream liaison sauce for reheated chicken or veal, built on a quick stock made from the carcass. The whole dish turns on temperature control at the end.
- Do not boil after the yolk goes inOnce the egg yolk and cream are added, keep the sauce below a simmer -- roughly 170-180F. A boil will scramble the yolk and leave the sauce grainy past repair.
- Temper the yolkBeat the yolk into the cream, then whisk a ladle of the hot thickened sauce into that mixture before returning it to the pan. Adding cold yolk directly to hot roux invites curdling.
- Lemon juice last, off the heatAcid added to a hot cream sauce can break it. Stir the tablespoon in at the very end, away from the burner, and taste before adding more.
- "Sweet cream"This means fresh unsoured cream, as opposed to soured or cultured cream. Use heavy or whipping cream.
- White stockA light, unroasted stock -- bones simmered without browning, so the sauce stays pale. The recipe allows two hours; veal bones may want longer. Skim and do not let it boil hard, or it will cloud.
- SaltA full teaspoon assumes an unsalted homemade stock. If you substitute commercial broth, salt at the end instead.
- YieldAbout two cups, enough to sauce four servings of diced poultry or veal. It does not reheat well; make it as you need it.
Sauce poulette is one of the small white sauces of the French repertoire -- a vélouté finished with egg yolk, cream and lemon, the same liaison that defines a blanquette. The name is usually taken to derive from poulet, chicken, though the derivation is traditional rather than documented, and in French practice the sauce is as commonly served with mushrooms, mussels and sheep's trotters as with fowl. Its appearance beside a note recommending it for warmed-over chicken or veal is telling: a household that had roasted a bird still had the carcass, and the sauce turns both the bones and the picked meat into a second dinner. Recipes of this kind carried real weight in the era before refrigeration, when yesterday's roast had to be used promptly and a good sauce was the difference between a made dish and obvious remains.