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Vegetable Sauce

A sauce made from carrots, turnips, mushrooms, sausages, and chestnuts simmered in stock with sherry, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the carrot, turnips, mushrooms, sausages, and chestnuts into small pieces.

  2. Place the chopped vegetables in a stewpan or earthenware pot.

  3. Add enough clear stock to cover the vegetables.

Cook and serve

  1. Simmer until the vegetables are tender.

  2. Stir in the sherry, pepper, and coarse sea salt 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + chestnuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together46 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + chestnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together186 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce as it softens in the stock.
Mushrooms
Contribute savory, earthy flavor and moisture as they cook.
Sausages
Add fat and meaty flavor that enriches the stock.
Boiled shelled chestnuts
Add starchy body and a mild, sweet, nutty flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer until the vegetables are tender. Simmering gently softens the cut pieces evenly; boiling hard can break them apart and cloud the stock, while undercooked pieces leave the sauce coarse and uneven.

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, mushroom, sherry, pepper):

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Chestnutthe original
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Chickpeafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, mushroom, sherry, pepper. 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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