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Sauce

Sauce Piquante

A spicy sauce made with butter, flour, cucumber pickle, stock, vinegar, salt, mustard, onion, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sauce Piquante

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the onion in the butter until light brown.

  2. Sift in the flour and let it brown.

  3. Gradually pour in the stock while stirring.

  4. Add the condiments and pickle, and boil until thickened to your liking.

  5. Stir in the vinegar 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. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fats the onion and carries flavour, and browns to give the sauce a richer colour and taste.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked into the fat and liquid, giving body.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the flour thickens.
Cucumber pickle
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its savoury flavours.
Onion
Softens and browns in the butter, building a sweet savoury base for the sauce.

The step that matters

Let the flour brown. Flour cooked in fat must be stirred and cooked until it turns the right shade; undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste, while overbrowned flour turns bitter and dark.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cucumber, vinegar, mustard, pepper):

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cucumber, vinegar, mustard, 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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