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Eschalot Sauce for Boiled Mutton

A sauce made from minced eschalots, mutton liquor, vinegar, pepper, salt, butter rolled in flour, optionally lemon peel and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Eschalot Sauce for Boiled Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the minced eschalots and the mutton liquor.

  2. Bring to a boil and let it simmer for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the vinegar, pepper, salt, and the butter rolled in flour, and shake together until it boils.

  4. For added flavor, you can include lemon peel and chopped parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eschalots
Provide the aromatic onion-like flavour that forms the base of the sauce.
Mutton liquor
Supplies the meaty liquid that the sauce is built on.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the sauce and gives it a smooth, rich body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the meat.

The step that matters

Add the butter rolled in flour and shake until it boils. Flour-coated butter must be dispersed and heated to the boil so the starch can gelatinise and thicken the sauce; otherwise it stays lumpy and floury.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, vinegar, pepper, walnut, butter, flour, parsley):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Cherryfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, vinegar, pepper, walnut, butter, flour, parsley. 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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