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Sauce

Sharp Sauce

A tomato, mushroom, and onion sauce thickened with flour and seasoned with vinegar, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Sharp Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the salad oil, tomato, onion, mushrooms, and garlic.

  2. Cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  3. Add the flour and stir until well combined.

  4. Gradually add the water (or stock) and bring the sauce to a boil.

  5. Stir in the vinegar and herbs, then simmer for a few minutes.

  6. Strain the sauce and serve.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mushroom + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats with the liquid, giving it body.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the oil.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its sharp flavor.
Tomato
Adds acidity, body and savory flavor to the base.

The step that matters

Add the flour and stir until well combined. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unevenly. Stirring it smoothly into the oil and vegetables first lets it coat the solids so the sauce thickens evenly when the liquid is added.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, mushroom, garlic, tomato, onion, flour, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, mushroom, garlic, tomato, onion, flour, pepper. 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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