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Sauce

Eschalot or Garlic Sauce

A sauce made by pounding garlic or eschalots with butter, sieving, and mixing into melted butter or brown gravy.

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 ↓

Eschalot or Garlic Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound garlic and eschalots to a pulp in a mortar with butter.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  3. Stir the pulp into melted butter or brown gravy.

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. 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 pungent aroma and sharp flavour that defines the sauce.
Eschalots
Add a milder, sweeter onion-like flavour that rounds out the garlic.
Butter
Carries the flavour and gives the sauce richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Rubbing the pulp through a fine sieve. Pounding alone leaves fibrous bits and raw, harsh pieces of garlic. Pressing the pulp through a fine sieve breaks these down so the sauce is smooth and the flavour blends evenly into the butter or gravy.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, butter. 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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