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Sauce

Monastery Sauce.— Sauce Monastique

A tart anchovy-based sauce with garlic, parsley, capers, mint, oil, lemon juice, vinegar, and pepper, served cold with fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Monastery Sauce.— Sauce Monastique

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound the anchovies, garlic, parsley, capers, and mint in a mortar.

  2. Gradually add oil until the sauce reaches the desired consistency.

  3. Mix in vinegar and lemon juice, then season with pepper.

  4. Strain through a fine sieve and serve with cold fish.

  5. Adjust the amount of vinegar and lemon juice according to your taste.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Mint + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Provide a salty, savory base that gives the sauce its depth.
Oil
Emulsifies with the pounded ingredients to give the sauce a smooth, thick body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the oil.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the oil.
Capers
Add briny, sharp bursts of flavor that complement the anchovies.

The step that matters

Gradually add oil. Adding oil slowly while pounding lets it emulsify into the paste. Adding it all at once can cause it to separate, leaving the sauce greasy and loose rather than smooth and thick.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, garlic, parsley, capers, lemon, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, garlic, parsley, capers, lemon, vinegar, pepper. 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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