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Gloucester Sauce

A mayonnaise-based sauce with sour cream, lemon, fennel, and Worcestershire, served with cold meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and fennel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 723 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Gloucester Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine the mayonnaise, sour cream, and lemon juice.

  2. Mix in the chopped fennel gradually.

  3. Add Worcestershire sauce to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve with cold meats.

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. Lemon + fenneltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together723 recipes

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

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Fennel + saucetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together181 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Cream + fenneltop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together215 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Lemon + saucetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 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

Mayonnaise
Forms the thick, creamy base of the sauce and carries the other flavours.
Sour cream
Adds tang and moisture that lighten the rich mayonnaise base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the richness of the mayonnaise.
Fennel
Adds a mild aniseed aroma and flavour to the sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, fennel, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, fennel, sauce. 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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