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Dessert

Taetar Sauce

A sauce made with fat or butter, flour, onion, garlic, bay leaves, celery root, carrot, cloves, peppercorns, soup stock, water, capers, sardines, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Taetar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Brown the fat or butter in a pan.

  2. Stir in the flour.

  3. Add the chopped onion, minced garlic, bay leaves, grated celery root, grated carrot, cloves, and whole peppercorns.

  4. Pour in the soup stock and water.

  5. Let it boil for 1 hour.

  6. Strain the mixture.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add the capers, chopped sardines, and lemon slices.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Garlic + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together834 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fat or butter
Carries flavor and adds richness, and browning it deepens the savory taste.
Flour
Cooked in the fat, it thickens the liquid into a smooth, body-rich base.
Celery root
Adds earthy, aromatic depth to the stock as it simmers.
Capers
Add sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness.
Sardines
Contribute savory, salty depth that gives the sauce its character.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour after browning the fat. The flour must cook in the hot fat so it thickens smoothly and loses its raw starchy taste. Adding it to cold fat or liquid tends to form lumps and leave a floury flavor.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, onion, garlic, celery, carrot, capers):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, onion, garlic, celery, carrot, capers. 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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