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Sauce

Piquant Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, onions, carrots, parsnip, shallots, herbs, garlic, flour, broth, vinegar, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 602 recipes mention both. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Piquant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the sliced onions, carrot, parsnip, shallots, thyme, basil, parsley, and garlic, then fry until nicely browned.

  3. Dredge in a little flour and moisten with broth and vinegar.

  4. Boil the sauce over low heat, skim, and strain through a sieve.

  5. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Mustard + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Parsnip + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together63 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

Butter
Fats the pan and helps the vegetables brown while adding richness to the sauce.
Onions
Caramelise during browning, adding sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the broth and vinegar.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the flavour of the vegetables.

The step that matters

Fry the vegetables until nicely browned. Browning through the Maillard reaction builds deep, savoury flavour. Pale vegetables give a flat sauce, so cook until golden rather than just softened.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, tarragon, pepper, mustard, carrot, parsnip, shallot):

  1. Beetrootbetter flavor fit
  2. Turnipbetter flavor fit
  3. Chivebetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tarragon, pepper, mustard, carrot, parsnip, shallot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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