Skip to main content
Sauce

Savoury Sauce for Roast Pork or Geese

A savory sauce made with onion, butter, thickening, mushroom catsup, port wine, water, pepper, salt, mustard, and lemon or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Savoury Sauce for Roast Pork or Geese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pint stewpan over medium heat.

  2. Fry the minced onion, stirring often, until it turns light brown.

  3. Add the thickening, mushroom catsup, port wine, warm water, pepper, and salt.

  4. Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the mustard and lemon juice or vinegar before serving.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Frying until light brown adds savory, sweet depth to the sauce.
Thickening (no. 257)
Starch that thickens the liquid as it simmers into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Fat that carries the onion flavor and adds richness to the sauce.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity depth that rounds out the savory base.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Simmering after adding the thickening. Starch thickens only when it is heated to a boil and simmered, so the sauce must reach a full boil and simmer for the full time to set properly and avoid a thin, floury result.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Plumfits about as well
  2. Cherryfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesHot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesMixed MustardMixed Mustard9 recipesWine Sauce for Sweet PuddingsWine Sauce for Sweet Puddings6 recipes