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Sauce

Bonne Bouche for Goose, Duck, or Roast Pork

A mustard, cayenne, and wine sauce for goose, duck, or roast pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bonne Bouche for Goose, Duck, or Roast Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the mustard, salt, and cayenne in a large wine glass of claret or port wine.

Serve

  1. Pour this mixture into the goose through a slit in the apron just before serving.

  2. Alternatively, stir the mixture into ¼ pint of thick melted butter or thickened gravy and serve it in a boat.

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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  2. Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mustard + port winetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together314 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + port winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,804 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Made mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through rich meat and fat.
Claret or port wine
Provides acidity and fruity depth to the sauce base.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, port wine, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, port wine, butter. 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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