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Sauce

Sauce Portugaise- -portuguese Sauce

A sauce made with shallots, butter, garlic, fish stock, tomato sauce, salt, cayenne pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,076 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Sauce Portugaise- -portuguese Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Lightly fry the chopped shallots in butter.

  2. Add the crushed garlic and moisten with fish stock.

  3. Allow the mixture to reduce.

  4. Stir in the tomato sauce.

  5. Season with coarse sea salt and cayenne pepper to taste.

  6. Incorporate the butter until melted.

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 + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + peppertop 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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Shallots
Soften and add a mild, sweet onion-like base flavour to the sauce.
Fish stock
Adds savoury depth and liquid, which reduces to concentrate the flavour.
Tomato sauce
Forms the body of the sauce and provides acidity and sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture when melted into the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Incorporate the butter until melted. Adding cold butter off the heat and swirling it in gives a smooth, glossy emulsion. If the sauce is kept boiling, the butter can separate and leave the sauce greasy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, butter, garlic, fish, tomato, sauce, pepper):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, butter, garlic, fish, tomato, sauce, pepper. 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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