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Sauce

Balbirnie Sauce for Cold Pheasant

A sauce made with shallot, mustard, oil, salt, vinegar, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Balbirnie Sauce for Cold Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped shallot, mustard, and oil thoroughly.

  2. Add the coarse sea salt, vinegar, and ketchup, then stir until well combined.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + ketchuptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together476 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mustard + ketchuptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together331 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

Shallot
Adds a sharp, aromatic onion-like flavour to the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharp heat and helps emulsify the oil into the sauce.
Oil
Adds richness and carries flavour, giving the sauce a smooth body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the sweetness.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness, tomato flavour and body to the sauce.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, vinegar, ketchup):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Radishfits less well
  4. Lettucefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, vinegar, ketchup. 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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