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Sauce

Grill Sauce

A sauce made from cream, vinegar, Harvey's Sauce, tomato ketchup, mustard, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Grill Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix cream, vinegar, Harvey's Sauce, and tomato ketchup.

  2. Stir in mustard until smooth.

  3. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  4. Heat the mixture over the fire until hot.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce poured over the grilled dish.

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 + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.
Tomato ketchup
Contributes sweetness, tomato flavour and body to the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour and helps emulsify the sauce smooth.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, vinegar, sauce, ketchup, mustard, pepper):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, vinegar, sauce, ketchup, mustard, 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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