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Sauce

Neapolitan Sauce

A sauce made with ham, brown sauce, stock, claret, Harvey's sauce, red currant jelly, horseradish, shallots, bay leaf, thyme, clove, mace, and peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and shallot 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine minced ham, thickened brown sauce, stock, claret, Harvey's sauce, red currant jelly, grated horseradish, chopped shallots, bay leaf, thyme, clove, mace, and peppercorns in a small saucepan.

  2. Simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain the sauce and serve.

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. Horseradish + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Red currant + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together121 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Thickened brown sauce
Forms the base body of the sauce, giving it thickness and a rich brown colour.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour that cuts through the richness of the brown sauce.
Red currant jelly
Contributes sweetness and gloss, balancing the sharpness of the wine and horseradish.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the sauce as it simmers.
Grated horseradish
Provides a sharp, pungent heat that mellows during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 20 minutes. A gentle simmer lets flavours infuse without reducing too fast or scorching the sugars in the jelly and sauce. A hard boil can make the sauce bitter, cloudy, or unevenly thickened.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, sauce, red currant, horseradish, shallot, thyme, clove):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, sauce, red currant, horseradish, shallot, thyme, clove. 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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