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Ravigote Sauce

A tangy French sauce made with onion, carrot, thyme, bay leaf, clove, mace, horseradish, vinegar, brown sauce, broth, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Ravigote Sauce

Why it works: Thyme and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,108 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Ravigote Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and sauté the onion, carrot, thyme, bay leaf, clove, mace, and horseradish for a few minutes.

  2. Add the vinegar, brown sauce, and broth, then bring to a boil.

  3. Skim off any foam, then stir in the currant jelly until melted.

  4. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve and serve with meat or poultry, especially good with hare or venison.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries the aromatics as they soften in the pan.
Brown sauce
Forms the savoury base of the sauce, giving it body and deep color.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich brown sauce and balances the sweetness.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and gloss, rounding out the sharpness of the vinegar.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent aroma and heat that fades with cooking.

The step that matters

Skim off any foam. Foam that rises as the sauce comes to a boil carries impurities that can make the sauce cloudy and taste bitter if left in.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, thyme, clove, horseradish, butter, vinegar):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, thyme, clove, horseradish, butter, vinegar. 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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