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Sauce

Now Now Sauce, for Bouilli Beef

A sauce made with butter, flour, beef broth, vinegar, mushroom ketchup, beer, pickled cucumbers, and parsley for bouilli beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Now Now Sauce, for Bouilli Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the parsley leaves very finely.

  2. Quarter the pickled cucumbers and cut them into small squares.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir to form a roux.

  3. Gradually add the beef broth, stirring constantly until smooth.

  4. Stir in the vinegar, mushroom ketchup, and beer.

  5. Add the chopped parsley and cucumbers, and simmer for a few minutes.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Vinegar + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Mushroom + beertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together128 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and helps form the roux with the flour.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce into a smooth, body-rich base as a roux.
Beef broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savory flavor.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the sauce and balances richness.
Pickled cucumbers
Add tangy, acidic bite and a crisp texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the broth into the roux. Adding liquid gradually while stirring constantly keeps the starch granules dispersed, so the sauce becomes smooth instead of lumpy.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, beef, vinegar, mushroom, ketchup, beer):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, beef, vinegar, mushroom, ketchup, beer. 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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