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Bacon Sauce

A savory sauce made from bacon fat, vinegar, flour, water, paprika, egg yolks, and cream, served with greens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bacon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the bacon fat in a saucepan.

  2. Add flour and stir until well mixed.

  3. Combine hot water with vinegar and slowly add to the first mixture while stirring constantly.

  4. Add paprika and slightly beaten egg yolks.

  5. Do not allow the sauce to boil after adding the eggs.

  6. Chill and thin with cream to a pourable consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve with spinach, dandelion, endive, chicory, corn salad, or lettuce.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Vinegar + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,064 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Vinegar + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,652 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set gently with the warm mixture.
Flour
Combines with the bacon fat to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Bacon fat
Carries flavor and gives the sauce a smooth, rich body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the richness of the fat.

The step that matters

Do not allow the sauce to boil after adding the eggs. Egg yolks are proteins that scramble and curdle when overheated, so the sauce can turn grainy. Keep it warm but below boiling once the yolks go in.

“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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