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Sauce

Quins Game, and Meat Sauce

A sauce made with butter, onions, shallots, garlic, carrot, parsnip, bay leaf, thyme, cloves, flour, port wine, strong gravy, cayenne pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,097 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Quins Game, and Meat Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the onions, shallots, garlic, carrot, parsnip, bay leaf, thyme, and cloves, then cook over heat until it begins to color.

  3. Stir in the flour, then add the port and strong gravy.

  4. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  5. Season with cayenne and salt, then boil again.

Serve

  1. Strain the sauce over the meat.

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. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Parsnip + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together270 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Shallot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that cooks the vegetables gently and carries their flavor into the sauce.
Onions
Cooking until colored adds sweetness and browned, savory depth to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the liquids, giving it body.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity depth, and its alcohol helps draw out aromatic flavors.
Strong gravy
Supplies the main savory liquid and meaty flavor that forms the sauce base.

The step that matters

Cook the vegetables until they just begin to color. Browning the onions, shallots and root vegetables builds deeper, sweeter flavor through caramelization and the Maillard reaction. Stopping too early leaves the sauce flat, while overcooking can turn it bitter.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, shallot, garlic, carrot, parsnip, thyme):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, shallot, garlic, carrot, parsnip, thyme. 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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