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A Good Saucid Fob Steaks

A sauce made from pepper, allspice, salt, horseradish, pickled shallots, and ketchup or walnut pickle, used on steaks or in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Good Saucid Fob Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Pound all the ingredients finely in a mortar.

  2. Combine them with the ketchup or walnut pickle.

  3. Let the mixture stand for two weeks.

  4. Strain off the liquid and bottle for use.

Serve

  1. Pour a little of the sauce over the steaks or mix it into the gravy.

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. Horseradish + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Whole black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat that gives the sauce its characteristic bite.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic flavour notes that round out the sauce.
Grated horseradish
Provides pungent heat and sharpness that cuts through rich meat.
Pickled shallots
Adds tangy, savoury depth and a little acidity to the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup or walnut pickle
Supplies the liquid base and concentrated savoury, umami flavour.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture stand for two weeks. The long rest lets the liquid draw out and blend the flavours of the pounded solids, so the sauce tastes mellow rather than raw and harsh.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, horseradish, shallot, mushroom):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, horseradish, shallot, mushroom. 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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