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Piquante Sauce

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

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 flour and cook for 1 minute.

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

  4. Boil for 10 minutes.

  5. Remove from heat and add 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

Onion
Softens as it fries in butter, adding savoury depth and sweetness to the base.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavour and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks briefly with the butter.
Stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce and carries the seasonings.
Cucumber
Adds cool, fresh texture and mild moisture to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and sharpens its flavour.

The step that matters

Add the vinegar off the heat. Vinegar is acidic and its sharp flavour is volatile, so adding it after boiling keeps it bright rather than cooked away.

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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