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Sauce

Olive Sauce

A sauce made from chopped stuffed olives, butter, sugar, cayenne pepper, horseradish, and thick sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Olive Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the olives

  1. Chop the stuffed olives.

  2. Cook the chopped olives in 1 pint of clear fresh water.

  3. In a separate pan, brown 2 tablespoons of butter.

  4. Pour the minced olives and their juice over the browned butter.

Finish the sauce

  1. To 1 pint of poivarde sauce, add 1 teaspoon of sugar, ¼ teaspoon of cayenne pepper, 3 tablespoons of horseradish, and 2 tablespoons of thick sweet cream.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

  5. Olive + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together475 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Stuffed olives
Supply the main savory flavour and body of the sauce.
Butter
Browning adds nutty, toasted aroma and richness to the sauce.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent bite that cuts through the richness.
Thick sweet cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the horseradish and olives.
Cayenne pepper
Adds gentle background heat.

The step that matters

Browning the butter. Butter moves quickly from golden to burnt because its milk solids darken fast. Burnt milk solids taste bitter and will carry into the whole sauce, so the butter should be watched closely and removed once it is nutty and golden.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, butter, sugar, pepper, cream):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, butter, sugar, pepper, cream. 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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