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Sauce

Garlic-Sauce

A sauce made by blanching, chopping, and simmering garlic with butter, optionally flavored with garlic vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,368 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Garlic-Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the garlic

  1. Blanch the garlic in two waters.

  2. Chop and pound the garlic in a mortar with a bit of butter or a little oil.

  3. Rub the paste through a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. Simmer the garlic paste in the melted butter.

  2. For a quicker version, stir a spoonful of garlic vinegar into the melted butter.

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Garlic + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,572 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Clove + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,045 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Garlic
Provides the main pungent flavour of the sauce once blanched and pounded into a paste.
Melted butter
Carries the garlic flavour and gives the sauce a rich, smooth body.
Garlic vinegar
Adds sharp acidity and garlic aroma in the quicker version without cooking.

The step that matters

Simmer the garlic paste in the melted butter. Gentle heat lets the garlic's flavour fat-soluble compounds release into the butter without the paste scorching or turning bitter. Too much heat browns the butter and sours the sauce.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, butter, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, 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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