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Rose Sauce

A sauce made with rosewater, butter, onion, carrots, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Rose Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion and fry until golden brown.

  3. Add the diced carrots, water, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  4. Cook gently until the carrots are soft.

Finish

  1. Strain the sauce through a sieve back into the saucepan.

  2. Heat the sauce and thicken with additional flour if necessary.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the onion brown and carry flavour.
Onion
Browns to add sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce base.
Carrots
Soften as they cook, adding body, natural sweetness and colour to the sauce.
Rosewater
Provides the floral aroma that defines this sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour. Flour needs heat to swell and set, and lumps form if it is added to a hot liquid without being whisked in smoothly. Adding it gradually while the sauce is warm helps it thicken evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, nutmeg, 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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