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Sauce

Pepper Sauce

A sauce made with Espagnole, butter, carrot, onion, peppercorns, bay leaf, thyme, cloves, and ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,108 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pepper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion, carrot, and ham; fry for 3 minutes.

Simmer and finish

  1. Stir in the peppercorns, bay leaf, thyme, and cloves.

  2. Skim off any foam, then boil for 10 minutes.

  3. 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. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Espagnole sauce
Forms the body and main structure of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the flavour of the aromatics.
Onion
Builds a sweet, savoury aromatic base as it fries.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and depth to the flavour base.
Peppercorns
Provide the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the sauce.
Raw ham
Contributes savoury, salty depth to the base.

The step that matters

Skim off any foam. Foam that is left in the sauce can cloud its appearance and carry off-flavours into the final liquid. Removing it as it rises during boiling keeps the sauce clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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