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Sauce

Piquant Sauce

A quick spicy sauce made with vinegar, pickles, onions, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Piquant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the vinegar with the sugar and minced onion.

  2. Add the butter and creamed flour to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the minced pickles, seasonings, and parsley.

  4. Cook until heated through.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the sauce its piquant tang.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Pickles
Contribute tangy, acidic flavor and a bit of chopped texture.
Onion
Adds savory aroma as it softens in the simmering vinegar.
Red pepper
Adds sharp heat and aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the creamed flour. Flour clumps when it hits hot liquid unevenly. Blending it smoothly into the mixture first and stirring while it heats keeps the sauce lump-free and lets the starch thicken it evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, pepper, butter, flour, parsley. 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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