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Sauce for All Kinds of Roast Meat

A sauce made with anchovy, red wine, gravy stock, shallot, lemon juice, pepper, and sea salt for roast meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sauce for All Kinds of Roast Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Wash the anchovy and place it in a saucepan.

  2. Add red wine, gravy stock, and chopped shallot.

  3. Simmer the mixture, then strain it.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the strained sauce with the gravy from the meat.

  2. Season with lemon juice, pepper, and salt before serving.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Red wine + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Anchovy + shallottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovy
Adds savory depth that rounds out the sauce without tasting distinctly fishy.
Red wine
Provides acidity and body, and concentrates in flavor as it simmers.
Gravy stock
Supplies liquid and savory flavor as the base of the sauce.
Shallot
Contributes a mild, sweet onion aroma that softens during simmering.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Simmer the mixture, then strain it. Simmering reduces the liquid and concentrates flavor, but over-reducing can make the sauce too salty or thick. Straining removes the solids so the sauce turns smooth.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (anchovy, red wine, lemon, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against anchovy, red wine, lemon, 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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