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Sauce

A Piquant Sauce for Serving with Broiled or Roast Chicken

A quick sauce of butter, vinegar, mustard, sugar, pepper, and salt, boiled and poured over chicken.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Piquant Sauce for Serving with Broiled or Roast Chicken

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix melted butter, vinegar, mustard, sugar, pepper, and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Heat the mixture until it reaches boiling point.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the chicken.

  2. Cover closely for five minutes 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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the sauce its piquant bite.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that complements the vinegar.
White sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with a little sweetness.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture until it reaches boiling point. Heat softens the sharp edge of the vinegar and blends the flavours. Overheating can cause the melted butter to separate, so the sauce should be watched as it comes to the boil.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, vinegar, sugar, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cucumberfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, sugar, 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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