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Sauce

Neapolitan Sauce

A sauce made from fish trimmings, bacon, carrots, onions, flour, stock, Madeira or sherry, and tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,606 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Neapolitan Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop fish trimmings and bones.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, melt butter and add bacon, carrots, and onions.

  2. Stir until browned.

  3. Add flour and cook until browned.

  4. Add stock, Madeira or sherry, and tomato sauce.

  5. Simmer for 5 minutes.

  6. Strain through a sieve.

  7. Boil again in a fresh saucepan.

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. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Melts to carry the vegetables and bacon, adding richness and helping them brown.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the fat and liquid.
Madeira or sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.
Onions
Browning builds savory sweetness and flavor in the base.
Bacon
Renders fat and adds savory, smoky flavor to the base.

The step that matters

Cook the flour until browned. Flour must cook in the fat long enough to lose its raw taste and gain color; undercooked flour leaves a pasty flavor and weakens the sauce's body.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, onion, flour, sherry, sauce):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, onion, flour, sherry, sauce. 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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