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Sauce

Garlic, or Knoblauch Sauce

A simple garlic sauce made with fat, garlic, flour, stock or water, and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Garlic, or Knoblauch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the fat or goose oil in a skillet.

  2. Add the finely chopped garlic and let it brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and mix well.

  4. Gradually add the soup stock or water, stirring continuously.

  5. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Garlic + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fat or goose oil
Carries the garlic and carries flavour through the pan, adding richness.
Garlic
Browns in the hot fat to give the sauce its aroma and savoury flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when it cooks in the fat and then with the liquid.
Soup stock or water
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the stock gradually. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour smooth and prevents lumps, because starch granules clump when they meet liquid all at once.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, flour, pepper):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, flour, 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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