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Potatoes, Poulette
Boil in two quarts water with a teaspoon salt twelve even-sized, small potatoes for thirty minutes. Drain, peel and keep hot. Heat one and a half tablespoons melted butter in a saucepan, add three finely chopped shallots and brown three minutes, then add three tablespoons flour and mix well while heating half a minute; pour in one gill hot milk, half gill cream, half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, the juice of a quarter of a lemon, half teaspoon salt, one saltspoon cayenne pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg. Sharply mix with wooden spoon until it comes to a boil, add one egg yolk, sharply mix for one minute, then add the potatoes; gently turn them in the sauce without boiling, for two minutes, being careful not to break them, dress on a vegetable dish and serve.
A sauce poulette is a white sauce finished with egg yolk and lemon, and the whole dish hinges on that yolk: once it is in, the sauce must never reach a boil again. The rest is straightforward, though the proportions need an eye kept on them.
- The yolk is the hingeAfter the yolk goes in, hold the pan below a simmer. A boil will scramble the yolk and leave the sauce grainy, and reheating leftovers has the same effect.
- Gill and saltspoonOne gill is half a cup, so the liquid is 1/2 cup hot milk plus 1/4 cup cream. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon.
- The flour is heavyThree tablespoons of flour to 3/4 cup of liquid gives something closer to a paste than a sauce, and the butter is short for that much flour. Either increase the butter to 3 tablespoons, or cut the flour to 1 1/2 tablespoons, and keep some of the potato water to loosen the sauce to coating consistency.
- CayenneA saltspoon (about 1/4 teaspoon) of cayenne in a small quantity of white sauce is assertive by current taste. A pinch is enough unless you want real heat.
- Do not brown the shallotsThree minutes of browning will colour and slightly bitter a sauce meant to be pale. Sweat them in the butter over low heat until translucent instead.
- Cooking the potatoesThey are boiled whole in their skins, then peeled hot — hence the small, even sizing. Test with a skewer rather than trusting the clock, since a waxy variety holds together far better here than a floury one that will break when turned.
- YieldTwelve small potatoes serve four as a side dish. It does not keep or reheat well.
Sauce poulette belongs to the classical French repertoire of velouté derivatives: a white roux sauce loosened with stock or milk, sharpened with lemon, and thickened at the last moment with egg yolk. The name is generally traced to poulet — the sauce is often said to have been built originally on chicken cooking liquor — though by the late nineteenth century it had detached from poultry entirely and was best known as the dressing for tripe à la poulette, mussels, sheep's trotters and mushrooms. Applying it to plain boiled potatoes is the thrifty end of the same idea: an inexpensive vegetable lifted by a rich finishing sauce. The insistence on small, even potatoes and on turning them gently keeps the dish intact, so that it arrives at the table unbroken.