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Sauce for Mashed Potatoes with Pea Purée

A sauce made with onion, parsley, ham, garlic, carrot, thyme, Espagnole sauce, vinegars, jelly, ketchup, Madeira, and finished with egg whites, mushrooms, gherkins, and ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Sauce for Mashed Potatoes with Pea Purée

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Combine the onion, parsley, ham or bacon, garlic, carrot, and thyme in a saucepan.

  2. Cover with Espagnole sauce and add anchovy and chili vinegar.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Simmer for 10 minutes, skimming as needed.

  5. Boil again until thickened to the consistency of cream.

Finish and hold

  1. Stir in red currant jelly and mushroom ketchup until dissolved.

  2. Add Madeira and strain the sauce.

  3. Keep the sauce warm in a bain-marie.

  4. Mix in the chopped egg whites, mushrooms, gherkins, and ham.

  5. Season with white pepper.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Espagnole sauce
Forms the thick, savory body of the sauce that carries all the other flavours.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a glossy finish that balances the sharp vinegars.
Madeira
Adds a rich, aromatic sweetness that deepens the flavour of the reduced sauce.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy flavour and a soft, meaty texture to the finished sauce.
Gherkins
Add acidity and crisp texture that cut through the richness of the sauce.
Anchovy vinegar
Adds sharp acidity and a salty, savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling until thickened to the consistency of cream. The sauce must reduce enough to coat the back of a spoon. Too little reduction leaves it thin, while overboiling makes it too thick and concentrated, so the cook has to watch closely and judge by texture.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, parsley, ham, garlic, carrot, thyme, sauce):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, parsley, ham, garlic, carrot, thyme, sauce. 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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