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Sauce

Papillotte Sauce

A sauce made from bacon, onions, brown sauce, mushrooms, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, sugar, and garlic, cooked and reduced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Papillotte Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, cook the bacon with the chopped onions over medium heat for a few minutes.

  2. Add the brown sauce and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in the chopped mushrooms, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, sugar, and garlic.

  4. Reduce the mixture until it thickens.

Finish

  1. Let it cool before using it for any dish prepared en Papillote.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 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

Bacon
Renders fat that carries flavor through the sauce and adds savory depth.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, forming a flavor base for the sauce.
Brown sauce
Provides the liquid base that reduces and thickens into the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and body as they cook into the reduction.

The step that matters

Reduce the mixture until it thickens. Reducing concentrates flavor and thickens the sauce through evaporation. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while over-reducing can make it too salty or sticky as it concentrates.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, mushroom, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, sugar, clove):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, mushroom, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, sugar, clove. 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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