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Sauce

Nasturtium Sauce

A sauce made from green nasturtium seeds steeped in vinegar and flavored with mace, nutmeg, ginger, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Nasturtium Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather the green nasturtium seeds and place them in a jar of vinegar without the stems.

  2. Keep a muslin bag of spices (mace, nutmeg, and hot ginger) in the jar.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt some butter in a pan.

  2. Add plenty of nasturtium seeds from the jar as the butter simmers.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mace + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Vinegar + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,126 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Green nasturtium seeds
Provide the main flavour and the pickled, peppery character of the sauce.
Vinegar
Acidity that sharpens the flavour and preserves the seeds in the jar.
Butter
Fat that melts into the sauce, carrying flavour and giving it a rich texture.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the vinegar.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the vinegar.

The step that matters

Adding the seeds to the simmering butter. The seeds are added from the vinegar jar, so they should be drained well first. Excess liquid can split the butter and stop it from coating the seeds properly.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, mace, nutmeg, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, mace, nutmeg, butter. 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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