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Sauce

Ham Sauce

A savory sauce made with ham meat, ham bone, gravy, herbs, onion, capsicums, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and capsicum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,571 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Ham Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Remove all lean meat from the ham bone, discarding any rusty parts.

  2. Mash the meat and bone together using a rolling pin.

Make the sauce

  1. Place the mash in a saucepan with 3 tablespoons of gravy.

  2. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly to prevent sticking.

  3. After some time, add the bundle of sweet herbs, pepper, and ½ pint of beef gravy.

  4. Cover and let it stew over gentle heat until it has a good flavor from the herbs.

  5. Strain off the gravy 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. Pepper + capsicumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,571 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Onion + capsicumtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together23,390 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean meat from ham
Provides the main savoury, meaty flavour of the sauce.
Bone from ham
Adds body and extra flavour to the gravy as it simmers.
Beef gravy
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour and gives the sauce its body.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat, stirring constantly. Meat and gravy scorch and stick easily on the base of a pan. Gentle heat and frequent stirring keep the sauce from catching and burning, which would give it a bitter, burnt taste.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, ham, pepper, beef, onion, capsicum):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, ham, pepper, beef, onion, capsicum. 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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