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Sauce

Sauce a LA Mirepoix

A savory sauce made by simmering ham, bacon, carrots, onions, herbs, and lemons in butter and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,053 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

  1. Combine ham, bacon, carrots, onions, parsley, young onions with cloves, bay leaves, thyme, sweet basil, mace, and sliced lemons in a new tin pot.

  2. Add 1 pound of butter and set over a slow fire.

  3. Moisten with bouillon or consomme, boil and skim.

  4. Let simmer for 5–6 hours.

  5. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve and keep for use.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Clove + macetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Parsley + basiltop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour from the aromatics as it cooks slowly.
Bacon
Releases fat and savoury flavour into the stock as it simmers.
Ham
Contributes savoury, salty flavour and body to the stock during long simmering.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the base as they soften over the long simmer.
Onions
Build savoury depth and sweetness as they break down slowly in the pot.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly and skim. A gentle simmer keeps the liquid clear and extracts flavour without breaking up fats. Skimming after the boil removes foam and impurities that would make the sauce cloudy or greasy.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, carrot, parsley, clove, thyme, basil, mace):

  1. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, parsley, clove, thyme, basil, mace. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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