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General Sauce

A sauce of salt, garlic, cloves, mace, long pepper, Madeira, shallots, peach leaves, lemons, and herbs, steeped overnight and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Leslie · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

General Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop six shallots or small onions, a clove of garlic, two peach leaves, a few sprigs of lemon thyme and sweet basil, and a few bits of fresh orange peel.

  2. Bruise in a mortar a quarter of an ounce of cloves, a quarter of an ounce of mace, and half an ounce of long pepper.

  3. Mix two ounces of salt, a jill of vinegar, the juice of two lemons, and a pint of Madeira.

Steep

  1. Put the whole of these ingredients together in a stone jar, very closely covered.

  2. Let it stand all night over embers by the side of the fire.

Strain and bottle

  1. In the morning pour off the liquid quickly and carefully from the lees or settlings, strain it and put it into small bottles, dipping the corks in melted rosin.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

88Calories
2 gProtein
1 gFat
22 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 7 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Peach1 medium (150g)59
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Long Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Garlic1 clove (3g)4
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Leslie. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Clove + peachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Madeira
Provides the main liquid and a rich, sweet, fortified wine aroma.
Salt
Seasons the sauce and helps preserve it over the long steep.
Lemons
Add acidity and fresh citrus brightness to balance the wine.
Shallots (in the method)
Contribute savoury sweetness and aromatic depth as they steep.

The step that matters

Covering the jar closely during the overnight steep. A tightly sealed jar keeps aromatics and volatile oils from escaping and limits contact with air, so flavour extracts evenly and the liquid stays fresh overnight.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, garlic, pepper, peach, lemon):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Basilfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, garlic, pepper, peach, lemon. 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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