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Sauce Piquante, or Sharp Sauce

A savory sauce made with shallot, carrot, mushrooms, butter, flour, brown stock, thyme, bay leaf, salt, cayenne pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,476 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sauce Piquante, or Sharp Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the shallot and mushrooms, scrape the carrot, and chop them finely.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the shallot, carrot, and mushrooms with the butter.

  3. Place the stewpan on the heat and fry until browned.

Make the sauce

  1. Stir in the flour and brown stock, then add the thyme and bay leaf.

  2. Bring the sauce to a boil, then reduce the heat and let it simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Season with salt, a few grains of cayenne pepper, and vinegar.

  4. Strain the sauce before serving.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and helps the vegetables brown.
Brown stock
Liquid base that gives the sauce its body and savoury depth.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and gives it its piquant edge.

The step that matters

Fry the vegetables until browned. Browning the shallot, carrot, and mushrooms in butter builds deep, roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale vegetables leave the finished sauce tasting flat.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, mushroom, butter, flour, thyme, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, mushroom, butter, flour, thyme, pepper, 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.

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