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Sauce

Poor Mans Sauce

A simple vinaigrette made with parsley, onions, oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Poor Mans Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the leaves from the parsley stalks and mince them finely.

  2. Sprinkle the minced parsley with salt.

  3. Shred the young onions finely and add them to the parsley.

Make the vinaigrette

  1. In a sauceboat, combine the parsley, onions, oil, vinegar, and ground black pepper.

  2. Stir all the ingredients together and serve.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Parsley leaves
Provides fresh, herbal aroma and most of the green flavour of the dressing.
Young onions
Add sharp, pungent flavour and crunch once shredded finely.
Oil
Adds richness and carries the flavours, giving the dressing a smooth body.
Vinegar
Supplies acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Sprinkle the minced parsley with salt. Salt drawn into finely minced herbs and onions softens their texture and helps flavour spread evenly through the dressing, so the seasoning does not sit in pockets.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, vinegar, 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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