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Sauce

Sauce Mignonette

A vinaigrette-style sauce made with vinegar, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, shallots, and chives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 450 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Sauce Mignonette

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the vinegar, coarse sea salt, crushed black pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and Tabasco sauce in a bowl.

  2. Add the minced shallots and chives to the mixture and stir well to combine all ingredients.

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. Shallot + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Pepper + chivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Vinegar + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sauce + shallottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,303 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

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the sauce and brightens the flavor of shellfish.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion bite and aroma that softens as the sauce sits.
Chives
Contribute a fresh, mild onion aroma and a bit of color.

Swap the chive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, sauce, shallot):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Horseradishfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Chivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, sauce, shallot. 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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