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Sauce

Piquant Sauce

A thin sauce of chopped young onions, chilies, olive oil, vinegar, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 29,779 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Piquant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine chopped young onions and chilies.

  2. Add olive oil and vinegar in a ratio of 3:1 until you achieve a thick sauce consistency.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve with curry, cutlets, steaks, pork, cold meat, or fish.

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. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together29,779 recipes

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

  2. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Young onions
Provide the sharp, aromatic base that gives the sauce its main flavor.
Chilies
Add heat and pungency that give the sauce its piquant character.
Olive oil
Adds fat and body, helping the sauce reach a thick, spoonable consistency.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Adding oil and vinegar in a 3:1 ratio. Oil and vinegar are immiscible and separate quickly, so the sauce needs to be stirred well and kept in the stated ratio to hold a thick, cohesive texture. Too much vinegar makes it thin and sharp, while too little oil leaves it dry.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, vinegar. 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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