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Sauce

Spanish Sauce

A savory sauce made with sweetbread, truffles, mushrooms, olives, forcemeat quenelles, chicken livers, sherry, Madeira sauce, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Spanish Sauce

Why it works: Mushroom and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Spanish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the sweetbread and cut it into dice.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sweetbread, truffles, mushrooms, olives, forcemeat quenelles, and chicken livers.

  2. Moisten with sherry and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Pour in the Madeira sauce and cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Skim the sauce and use when required.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Mushroom + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Sherry + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Mushroom + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Olive + chickentop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbread
Provides a tender, rich meat texture that gives the sauce body.
Truffles
Adds a strong earthy aroma that defines the flavour of the sauce.
Mushrooms
Contribute savoury, umami depth and a soft, meaty texture.
Madeira sauce
Forms the base liquid, adding sweetness and a rich, concentrated flavour.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic complexity that brightens the rich ingredients.

“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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