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Sauce

Cardinal Sauce

A sauce made from reduced Velouté, mushroom essence, lobster butter, anchovy essence, lemon juice, cayenne, and a glaze of meat or fish liquor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and lobster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cardinal Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the reduced Velouté sauce, mushroom essence, lobster butter, anchovy essence, lemon juice, and cayenne in a stewpan.

  2. Mix well and strain the sauce through a fine sieve into a bain-marie.

Finish with glaze

  1. Reduce the essence or liquor from the meat or fish to a glaze before serving.

  2. Incorporate the glaze into the sauce for added flavor.

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. Sauce + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mushroom + meattop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,423 recipes

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

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Reduced velouté sauce
Forms the thick, smooth base that carries all the other flavors.
Lobster butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the seafood flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness.
Essence of mushrooms
Adds concentrated savory, earthy depth.
Essence of anchovies
Adds salty, savory depth that rounds out the sauce.

The step that matters

Reduce the glaze before incorporating it. Reducing the meat or fish essence concentrates its flavor and evaporates excess water. If it stays thin, it dilutes the sauce rather than adding depth.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, mushroom, lobster, butter, meat):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Grapefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, mushroom, lobster, butter, meat. 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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