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Dessert

Sauce Piquante

A savory sauce made with butter, onions, carrots, thyme, cloves, shallots, parsley, garlic, flour, stock, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Sauce Piquante

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the onions, carrots, thyme, cloves, shallots, parsley, and garlic (if using).

  3. Cook until the carrots are soft.

  4. Sprinkle in the flour and cook for 5 more minutes.

Finish the sauce

  1. Pour in the stock and vinegar, then bring to a boil.

  2. Skim off any foam and strain the sauce through a sieve.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Thickens the stock and vinegar into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Beef or veal stock
Provides the liquid base and savory meaty flavor of the sauce.
Strong vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that gives the sauce its piquant bite.
Onions
Soften and build sweet, savory depth as the base of the sauce.
Sweet butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness to the sauce base.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour before adding liquid. Cooking the flour for a few minutes in the fat removes its raw taste and lets it thicken evenly. Adding stock too soon can leave lumps or a pasty flavor.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, carrot, thyme, shallot, parsley, garlic):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, carrot, thyme, shallot, parsley, garlic. 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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