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Minced Sauce

A savory sauce made with shallots, mushrooms, parsley, garlic, thyme, bay leaf, cloves, white pepper, nutmeg, consommé, Espagnole sauce, anchovy butter, gherkins, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Minced Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine shallots, mushrooms, parsley, garlic, thyme, bay leaf, cloves, white pepper, and nutmeg in a saucepan.

  2. Reduce the mixture on low heat.

  3. Remove the bay leaf, thyme, and cloves.

  4. Add consommé and Espagnole sauce.

  5. Reduce the mixture until thick.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the sauce into a bain-marie saucepan.

  2. Mix in anchovy butter, minced gherkins, and capers.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Espagnole sauce
Provides a rich, savoury base that thickens and deepens the sauce's body.
Consommé
Adds liquid and savoury depth, reducing to concentrate its flavour.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy savour and moisture that softens and concentrates during reduction.
Anchovy butter
Adds salty, savoury richness and fat that rounds out the finished sauce.
Shallots
Add mild sweetness and aromatic depth as they cook down into the base.

The step that matters

Reducing the mixture until thick. Reduction concentrates flavour and thickens the sauce by evaporating water. Too little reduction leaves it thin and bland, while overheating can scorch the solids on the pan bottom, so keep the heat gentle and stir.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, mushroom, parsley, clove, garlic, thyme, nutmeg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, mushroom, parsley, clove, garlic, thyme, nutmeg. 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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