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Preserve

Piquant Sauce

A savory sauce made with shallot, coulis, lemon, garlic, butter, stock, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Piquant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Combine chopped shallot and coarse sea salt in a saucepan.

  2. Cook until the stock reduces but does not burn.

  3. Add coulis.

  4. Boil for a few minutes.

  5. Squeeze in lemon juice.

  6. Season with black pepper, sugar, and garlic vinegar.

Build the sauce

  1. Rub the bottom of a small saucepan with garlic.

  2. Add butter.

  3. Add onion slices.

  4. Add stock.

  5. Add vinegar.

  6. Add black peppercorns.

  7. Let it boil down.

  8. Stir in flour to thicken.

  9. Add more coulis.

  10. Strain through a fine sieve.

  11. Squeeze in lemon juice.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a smooth finish.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the sauce body.
Stock
Forms the savoury liquid base that reduces to concentrate flavour.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances richness.

The step that matters

Stir in flour to thicken. Flour must be cooked in the hot liquid while stirring, or it forms lumps and leaves a raw starchy taste. Cooking it briefly lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the sauce.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, lemon, pepper, sugar, vinegar, clove, butter):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, lemon, pepper, sugar, vinegar, clove, butter. 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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