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Sauce

Olive Sauce

A sauce made with flour, butter, lemon rind, white wine, and olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Olive Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the flour and butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the lemon rind and gradually thin the mixture with white wine.

  3. Cook for 15 minutes, then slice the olives and stir them in.

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. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White wine + olivetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,949 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the butter and wine into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and its browning builds a nutty flavor.
White wine
Adds acidity and liquid that loosens the roux into a pourable sauce.
Olives
Contribute salty, briny flavor to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thinning the roux with wine. Adding wine too quickly to a hot browned flour and butter mixture can cause lumps. Adding it gradually and stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, white wine, olive):

  1. Plumfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Grapefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, white wine, olive. 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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