Skip to main content
Main

Sauce Piquante

A sauce made from tongue broth, butter, mustard, herbs, and vinegar, served with boiled tongue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Sauce Piquante

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the butter in a saucepan over a clear fire.

  2. Heat the cup of liquor to a boil, then skim and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Skim again before stirring in the flour mixed with cold water.

  4. As the sauce thickens, add the butter, herbs, mustard, and vinegar.

  5. Bring to a boil, pour half over the tongue, and serve the rest in a sauceboat.

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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Browned flour
Thickens the liquor into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a nutty flavor when browned, and body to the finished sauce.
Onion vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savory sauce.
Made mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent note that balances the richness.

The step that matters

Skim again before stirring in the flour mixed with cold water. Skimming removes foam and fat that would otherwise cloud the sauce and leave an unpleasant surface. Flour mixed with cold water disperses evenly before heating, which prevents lumps as the starch thickens the liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mustard, pepper, flour, parsley, marjoram, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mustard, pepper, flour, parsley, marjoram, vinegar. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes