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Sauce

Hot Sauce, for Broils, Etc

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, stock, capers, shallots, mustard, anchovy essence, walnut ketchup, port, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hot Sauce, for Broils, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour and mix smoothly with a wooden spoon until lightly browned.

  3. Gradually add the stock while stirring continuously.

  4. Add the capers, shallots, mustard, essence of anchovy, walnut ketchup, port or claret, and cayenne.

  5. Boil gently for 6 to 7 minutes.

Serve

  1. 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. Capers + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Shallot + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with the butter as a roux, giving it body and a light browned colour.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a pourable sauce.
Walnut ketchup
Adds deep, savoury, slightly tangy flavour to the sauce.
Port or claret
Adds wine-based acidity and depth that rounds out the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. Cooking the flour in melted butter builds a roux that thickens the sauce. Stirring constantly keeps it smooth and prevents lumps or scorching, and the colour develops as the starch toasts.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, capers, shallot, mustard, anchovy, ketchup):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Lentilsfits about as well
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, capers, shallot, mustard, anchovy, ketchup. 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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