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Sauce

A LA Belvoib

A sauce made with port wine, Harvey sauce, walnut pickle, gravy, pickled walnut, butter, onion, mustard, cayenne, and sea salt.

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 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 9,243 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

  1. Mix the port wine, Harvey sauce, walnut pickle, gravy, bruised pickled walnut, butter, and sliced onion in a bowl.

  2. Add mustard, cayenne, and coarse sea salt to taste.

  3. Serve the mixture hot as an accompaniment to stews, hashes, grills, and game.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,243 recipes

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

  2. Port wine + buttertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,498 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Port wine + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together237 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Sauce + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together42,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce base.
Harvey sauce
Contributes savoury, tangy richness as the main flavouring.
Walnut pickle
Provides sharp, acidic bite and a distinctive tangy flavour.
Gravy
Adds meaty body and moisture to thin the sauce into a spoonable consistency.

Flavor stand-ins for the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, sauce, butter, onion, mustard):

  1. Beansbetter flavor fit
  2. Peasabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Sesameabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, sauce, butter, onion, mustard. 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.

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