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Salmi Sauce

A savory sauce made with shallots, carrot, parsley roots, ham, spices, Madeira, Spanish sauce, and partridges.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Salmi Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine shallots, carrot, parsley roots, ham, clove, mace, bay leaf, thyme, butter, and mushrooms in a stewpan over gentle heat.

  2. Fry until the stewpan is colored all around.

Build the sauce

  1. Moisten with Madeira and add a small lump of sugar.

  2. Reduce the liquid by half.

  3. Add Spanish sauce and the trimmings of the partridges.

  4. Stew for one hour on low heat.

Finish and serve

  1. Skim off the fat, taste for seasoning, and strain over the partridges.

  2. Heat the sauce without boiling, reduce it, and strain through a tamis 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Madeira
Adds wine flavor and acidity, and reduces to a concentrated, aromatic base.
Spanish sauce
Gives the sauce body and a rich, thickened texture.
Shallots
Add a mild sweet aroma that builds the sauce's flavor base.
Mushrooms
Add savory, earthy depth to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the vegetables brown and carry flavor.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce without boiling. Boiling can make a reduced sauce cloudy, greasy, or tight-textured, and can break its emulsion. Gentle heat keeps it smooth and clear before straining.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, carrot, parsley, ham, clove, thyme, butter):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, carrot, parsley, ham, clove, thyme, butter. 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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