Skip to main content
Sauce

Neapolitan Sauce

A savory sauce made with ham, brown sauce, stock, Harvey's sauce, claret, currant jelly, shallots, horseradish, bay leaf, peppercorns, anchovy, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Neapolitan Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine minced ham, brown sauce, stock, Harvey's sauce, claret, currant jelly, chopped shallots, grated horseradish, bay leaf, and peppercorns.

  2. Simmer the mixture for about ten minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the anchovy and butter, stirring until melted.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together775 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sauce + shallottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sauce
Forms the savoury base of the sauce, giving body and depth of flavour.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour that balances the richness of the sauce.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a glossy body that offsets the sharp and salty notes.
Butter
Adds fat and a silky texture when stirred in at the end.
Anchovy
Contributes a deep, savoury note that rounds out the sauce.
Minced ham
Adds salty, meaty flavour that carries through the simmered sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and anchovy. Stirring the butter in off the heat or at low heat keeps it emulsified and glossy. If the sauce is boiling hard when the butter goes in, the fat can separate and the sauce turns greasy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, sauce, shallot, horseradish, anchovy, butter):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, sauce, shallot, horseradish, anchovy, 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.

You might also like

Currant Jelly SauceCurrant Jelly Sauce32 recipesHorseradish Cream SauceHorseradish Cream Sauce6 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipes