Skip to main content
Sauce

Annie Snyder

A wine sauce thickened with flour and butter, flavored with lemon, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Snyder, Annie Iaeger · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and 68,474 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Annie Snyder

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wine sauce

  1. Mix 1 dessert spoonful of flour with a little butter and a wineglass of water, the juice of a lemon, salt, pepper and a little nutmeg.

  2. Place the mixture on a quick fire and stir.

  3. When the sauce has boiled up two or three times take off the fire and serve.

Make the pickled vegetables

  1. Chop twelve green peppers, twelve red peppers, and fifteen small onions finely.

  2. Pour the chopped vegetables over boiling water and let stand 5 minutes, then drain.

  3. Again pour over boiling water and let stand 10 minutes, drain, and add 1 cup of sugar, 3 teaspoonfuls salt, and 1 quart of vinegar.

  4. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes and can.

By Snyder, Annie Iaeger. 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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.
Butter (in the method)
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Green peppers
Provide the main vegetable bulk and a fresh, slightly bitter flavour.
Red peppers
Add sweetness and colour to the chopped vegetable mixture.
Small onions
Add pungency that mellows during the boiling and pickling.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves and sharpens the vegetables.

The step that matters

Boiling the vegetables in water twice before adding vinegar. The two rounds of boiling water soften the chopped vegetables and draw out some of their moisture and sharpness, so they stay tender and balanced once the vinegar mixture is added and boiled.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, flour, pepper):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  3. Mustardbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, flour, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes