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Sauce

Sauces for Roast Fowls

A gravy made from ham, veal, mushrooms, sweet herbs, shallot, allspice, and butter, simmered in broth or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and shallot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sauces for Roast Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Stew ham, veal, and mushrooms with sweet herbs, shallot, allspice, and butter until browned.

  2. Simmer the mixture in weak broth or water until it forms a strong gravy.

  3. Strain the gravy and season with additional flavoring as desired.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in a sauce-tureen.

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. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,303 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

Ham
Adds savory, meaty flavor to the gravy as it stews and reduces.
Veal
Contributes rich meat flavor and body to the gravy.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savoriness and deepen the flavor of the gravy.
Butter
Fat that helps the ingredients brown and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Stew until browned. Browning the ham, veal, and mushrooms in butter creates deep flavors through the Maillard reaction. Pale stewing yields a flatter, less savory gravy once simmered.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, mushroom, shallot, butter, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, mushroom, shallot, butter, sauce. 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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