Skip to main content
Sauce

Garlic Sauce

A sauce made by boiling garlic with vinegar, stock, ham, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Garlic and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,090 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Garlic Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the garlic cloves in white vinegar and white stock with the piece of ham.

  2. Reduce the mixture and strain it off.

  3. Add either white or brown sauce to the strained liquid.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and sugar, and omit the vinegar.

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. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  2. Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Garlic cloves
Provides the main pungent aroma and flavour of the sauce.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavours of the garlic and ham.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the stock as it boils.
White or brown sauce
Adds body and richness to the strained liquid.

The step that matters

Reducing and straining the mixture. Reducing concentrates the flavour and thickens the liquid, so the cook must stop before it becomes too intense or salty. Straining removes the garlic and ham solids so the sauce is smooth.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, ham, sauce, pepper, sugar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Clovefits about as well
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, ham, sauce, pepper, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes