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Sauce

Wow Wow Sauce for Stewed or Bouilli Beef

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, beef broth, vinegar, mushroom ketchup or port wine, mustard, parsley, and pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Wow Wow Sauce for Stewed or Bouilli Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Gradually add the beef broth, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. Mix in the vinegar, mushroom ketchup or port wine, and mustard.

  5. Let the sauce simmer until it reaches your desired thickness.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the parsley and pickles, warming them through.

  2. Serve the sauce over the beef or in a sauce tureen.

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. Mustard + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Parsley + cucumbertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour as the base of the roux.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Beef broth
Forms the liquid body of the sauce and supplies savoury meaty flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens and balances the richness of the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup or port wine
Adds deep savoury and fruity notes that give the sauce its character.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharpness and a hint of heat that lifts the savoury flavours.

The step that matters

Adding the broth gradually while stirring constantly. Adding liquid slowly to the hot butter and flour mixture and stirring keeps starch dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, beef, vinegar, mushroom, mustard, cucumber):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, beef, vinegar, mushroom, mustard, cucumber. 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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