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Sauce

Oude Sauce for Cold Meat

A sauce made with onions, clarified butter, chillies, haddock, lemon juice, tomato pulp, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Oude Sauce for Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the minced onions in clarified butter until lightly browned.

  2. Add the chopped chillies, salt, and flaked haddock; stir for 3-4 minutes.

  3. Gradually add the lemon juice, tomato pulp, and a little water while stirring until the sauce thickens to a paste consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce the same day it is made.

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. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + haddocktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together764 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

Onions
Softened and lightly browned, they build a sweet, savoury base for the sauce.
Clarified butter
Fat that fries the onions and carries flavour through the sauce.
Dried haddock
Adds a concentrated, salty fish flavour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the fat.
Tomato pulp
Adds moisture and body that help the sauce thicken to a paste.

The step that matters

Adding the liquids gradually while stirring. Adding the lemon juice, tomato pulp, and water slowly while stirring lets the mixture combine evenly and thicken gradually, rather than becoming lumpy or watery.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, haddock, tomato):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Cherryfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, haddock, tomato. 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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