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Cukkv Sauce

A savory sauce made with onion, butter, ham, celery, green pepper, clove, peppercorns, curry powder, stock, egg yolk, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Cukkv Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the onion and brown it in a saucepan with the butter.

  2. Add the chopped ham, celery, green pepper, clove, and black peppercorns. Mix thoroughly and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Season with salt, flour, and curry powder. Mix well and add the soup stock or boiling water.

  4. Simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  5. Beat the egg yolk with the cream, add it to the sauce, and let it get scalding hot.

  6. Strain the sauce and serve hot.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce and adds richness when heated gently.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the stock.
Butter
Adds fat and helps brown the onion for flavor.
Cream
Adds richness and smooths the texture of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream. If the sauce boils after the egg yolk goes in, the yolk can scramble and turn grainy. Heating it gently to scalding hot thickens it smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, ham, celery, pepper, clove, flour, egg):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, celery, pepper, clove, flour, egg. 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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