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Sauce

Lamb Sauce

A buttery sauce with breadcrumbs, parsley, shallots, stock, wine, and citrus juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lamb Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Roll the butter in the bread crumbs.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the butter, parsley, shallots, stock, and white wine.

  3. Boil for a few minutes until heated through.

Finish and serve

  1. Squeeze in the lemon or orange juice before serving.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a silky, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Bread crumbs
Absorb melted butter and help thicken the sauce slightly.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion-like aroma to the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth as it reduces in the sauce.
Lemon juice or orange juice
Adds bright acidity that lifts and balances the rich butter.

The step that matters

Squeeze in the lemon or orange juice before serving. Citrus aromas are volatile and fade with prolonged heat, and acid stays bright when added at the end. Adding it after boiling keeps the sauce fresh and lively rather than dull.

“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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