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Piquante Sauce

A sauce made with onion, butter, flour, stock, cucumber, parsley, mustard, vinegar, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Piquante Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the chopped onion in butter until nearly done.

  2. Add the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Stir in the stock, seasoning, chopped cucumber, parsley, and mustard.

  4. Boil for 10 minutes.

  5. Remove from heat and add 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. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the onion's flavor and forms the fat base for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and stock.
Stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in butter.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Add the vinegar off the heat. Vinegar's acidity is bright and sharp, and prolonged boiling can dull its fresh flavor, so it is added after the sauce comes off the heat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cucumber, parsley, mustard, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cucumber, parsley, mustard, vinegar. 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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