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Sauce

Military Sauce

A savory sauce made from ham, celery, herbs, stock, and wine, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Military Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the ham, celery, chervil, thyme, tarragon, parsley, bay leaf, shallot, lemon, stock, and white wine in a stewpan.

  2. Cover the stewpan and simmer gently until the moisture is reduced by half.

  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. Chervil + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chervil + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Adds savoury, salty meat flavour that deepens the sauce as it simmers.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth, and its flavour concentrates as the liquid reduces.
Strong stock
Forms the liquid base, and reducing it gives the sauce body and concentrated flavour.
Celery
Contributes savoury, vegetal aroma to the liquid as it simmers.
Shallot
Adds mild sweetness and aromatic depth to the reduction.

The step that matters

Reducing the moisture by half over gentle simmering. Reduction concentrates flavour and thickens the liquid. Boiling too hard can make it cloudy or over-reduce it, so a gentle simmer with a covered pan keeps control over how much liquid is lost.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, chervil, thyme, tarragon, parsley, shallot, lemon):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, chervil, thyme, tarragon, parsley, shallot, lemon. 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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