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Zouave Sauce

A sauce made with onions, tomato puree, brown sauce, vinegars, mustard, Tabasco, chutney, raisins, and stock, served with cooked white meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Zouave Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the minced onions lightly in hot fat, then drain them.

  2. In a clean stewpan, combine the onions, tomato puree, brown sauce, tarragon vinegar, chili vinegar, and French wine vinegar.

  3. Bring to a boil, skim, and add salt, French mustard, and Tabasco sauce to taste.

  4. Stir in the Indian chutney and quartered sultana raisins.

  5. Simmer until the onions and raisins are tender, adding brown stock as needed to prevent thickening.

Finish and serve

  1. Add any previously cooked white meat, cover, and let it sit by the fire (below boiling point) for about 20 minutes.

  2. Dish the meat, bring the sauce to a boil, pour it over the meat, 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. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together391 recipes

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

  4. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, becoming tender and giving body to the sauce.
Tomato puree
Adds concentrated tomato flavour, colour and body to the sauce.
Brown sauce
Provides the rich, savoury base and body of the sauce.
Sultana raisins
Add sweetness and softness as they simmer until tender.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds sharp acidity and aromatic flavour that balances the richness.

The step that matters

Simmer with brown stock added as needed. Reduction thickens the sauce as its water evaporates, so adding brown stock keeps it from becoming too thick and pasty while the onions and raisins soften fully.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, tomato, sauce, tarragon, vinegar, wine, mustard):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, tomato, sauce, tarragon, vinegar, wine, mustard. 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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