Skip to main content
Sauce

Ashee Sauce

A sauce made with pickled cucumbers, capers, parsley, eschalots, boiled fowl, ham, carrot, egg yolks, egg whites, seasoned cullis, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ashee Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped pickled cucumbers, capers, parsley, eschalots, boiled fowl, boiled ham, boiled carrot, egg yolks, and egg whites.

  2. Add the seasoned cullis and mushroom ketchup to the mixture.

  3. Simmer all ingredients together for 15 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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cucumber + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Cucumber + carrottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,215 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

Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness and body as it simmers.
Egg whites
Help set and thicken the mixture as it cooks.
Seasoned cullis
Provides the liquid base that the other ingredients simmer in.
Pickled cucumbers
Add sharp acidity that cuts through the richness.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury depth and umami flavour.
Boiled fowl
Supplies the main protein, giving the sauce body and substance.

The step that matters

Simmering the mixture with egg. Egg proteins set when heated, so simmering too hard or too long can curdle or scramble the eggs and leave the sauce grainy. Keep the heat gentle and stir to keep the texture smooth.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (capers, parsley, ham, carrot, egg, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against capers, parsley, ham, carrot, egg, mushroom, ketchup. 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 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes