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Grill Sauce

A savory sauce made from gravy, butter, flour, ketchup, lemon, mustard, capers, pepper, anchovy essence, eschalot, and chili vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Grill Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter and flour until well combined.

  2. Add the gravy, mushroom or walnut ketchup, lemon juice, mustard, capers, black pepper, grated lemon rind, essence of anchovies, eschalot wine or minced eschalot, and chili vinegar or cayenne.

  3. Simmer the mixture together for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour some sauce over the grilled dish and serve the rest 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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts with the flour to form a smooth, rich base that carries the other flavours.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it simmers, giving it body.
Gravy
Supplies the main liquid and savoury depth of the sauce.
Mushroom or walnut ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances richness.
Essence of anchovies
Contributes concentrated savoury saltiness and depth.

The step that matters

Simmering after adding the flavourings. Flour needs to simmer long enough to cook out its raw taste and reach full thickening. Gentle heat also lets the flavourings blend without the acids and sharp seasonings turning harsh or the sauce scorching.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, mushroom, mustard, capers, pepper, wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, mushroom, mustard, capers, pepper, wine. 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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