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Sauce

Vegetable Sauce

A sauce made from veal broth, carrots, onion, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Vegetable Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the sauce

  1. Boil the veal broth in a pot.

  2. Add the minced onion and finely chopped carrots to the broth.

  3. Cook until the vegetables are tender.

Season and thicken

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

  2. Thicken the sauce as desired.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Carrot + vealtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 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

Veal broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries its flavor.
Carrots
Soften as they cook, adding natural sweetness and body to the sauce.
Onion
Adds aromatic savory flavor as it cooks into the broth.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds tangy, savory depth to the seasoning.
Thickening agent
Thickens the sauce to the desired consistency.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, veal, pepper, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, veal, pepper, sauce. 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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