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Salmi Sauce

A sauce made from game or bird carcasses, shallots, oil, bay leaf, thyme, mushrooms, port wine, stock, Espagnole sauce, and red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,476 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Salmi Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the aromatics

  1. Chop the shallots very fine.

  2. Rinse them in water, then squeeze the shallots dry.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry them in salad oil in a stewpan over medium heat.

  2. Add the bay leaf, thyme, and mushroom trimmings.

  3. Add the bird carcasses and fry briefly.

  4. Moisten with port wine and cover.

  5. Steam for 5 minutes.

  6. Add stock, Espagnole sauce, and red currant jelly.

  7. Bring to a boil and cook for 10 minutes.

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. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + red curranttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together121 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Shallot + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Shallots
Provide the aromatic base that flavours the sauce as they soften in oil.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth, and its acidity helps balance the rich sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Forms the thick, savoury body of the sauce.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that balances the savoury, gamey flavour.
Mushroom trimmings
Contribute earthy umami savouriness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Squeezing the shallots dry before frying. Excess water would steam the shallots instead of letting them brown in the oil, which dilutes flavour and weakens the sauce's aromatic base.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, thyme, mushroom, port wine, sauce):

  1. Lemonfits about as well
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Red currantthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, thyme, mushroom, port wine, sauce. 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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