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Sauce

Devilled Sauce

A spicy tomato sauce with onion, mustard, and Worcestershire sauce, finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Devilled Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the chopped onion in butter over medium heat.

  2. Add ground mustard, flour, salt, powdered sugar, Worcestershire sauce, and cayenne pepper. Mix thoroughly.

  3. Stir in the crushed tomatoes and bring to a boil.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  5. Stir in the butter before serving hot with broiled fish.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  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

Onion
Browning in butter builds a savory, sweet base for the sauce.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, moisture and acidity of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Butter
Adds fat and a rich, smooth finish to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Simmering lets the tomatoes reduce and the flour fully cook and thicken the sauce. Stirring prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan, which would add a burnt taste.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, mustard, flour, sugar, sauce, pepper):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, mustard, flour, sugar, sauce, pepper. 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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