Name: Sauce for Hash or Stew
Ingredients: ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper, finely powdered; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 teaspoons pounded sugar; 1 tablespoon strained lemon juice; 2 tablespoons Harvey's sauce; 1 teaspoon best mushroom catsup (or caviar); ⅓ cup port wine; optional: little eschalot or garlic vinegar

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 Hash or Stew

Ingredients

½ teaspoon cayenne pepper, finely powdered
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
2 teaspoons pounded sugar
1 tablespoon strained lemon juice
2 tablespoons Harvey's sauce
1 teaspoon best mushroom catsup (or caviar)
⅓ cup port wine
optional: little eschalot or garlic vinegar

Directions

Combine cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, pounded sugar, and strained lemon juice in a bowl.
Add Harvey's sauce, mushroom catsup, and port wine to the mixture and stir well to combine all ingredients.
Adjust flavor with eschalot or garlic vinegar if desired.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mushroom + garlictop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,700 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,090 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Lemon + garlictop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,893 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Mushroom + port winetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together570 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

Harvey's sauce: Adds a savoury, tangy depth that forms the base flavour of the sauce.
Port wine: Adds sweetness and body, thinning the sauce while contributing fruity richness.
Strained lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the sugar and salt.
Pounded sugar: Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharp acidity and heat.
Cayenne pepper: Adds sharp heat that gives the sauce its characteristic bite.

Swap the garlic

The recipe marks garlic as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, sugar, lemon, sauce, mushroom, port wine):

Marjoramfits better
Thymefits better
Parsleyfits better
Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar, lemon, sauce, mushroom, port wine. 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.