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Sauce

Poor Mans Sauce

A simple sauce made with parsley, eschalots, broth or water, peppercorns, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,477 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Poor Mans Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine minced parsley, eschalots, broth or water, and peppercorns in a pot.

  2. Stew the mixture until cooked through.

  3. Add vinegar before serving.

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. Parsley + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Eschalots
Provide a mild, savoury aromatic base that gives the sauce depth of flavour.
Broth or water
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavours and gives the sauce its body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the savoury flavours.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, green herbal aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Add vinegar before serving. Vinegar's sharp acidity is volatile and mellows when kept hot for long. Adding it at the end keeps the sauce tasting bright rather than flat and cooked.

“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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