Name: Store Sauce for Roast Pork, Goose, & C
Ingredients: 2 ounces green sage, chopped fine; 1 ounce lemon peel, shaved thin; 1 ounce eschalots, chopped; 1 ounce coarse sea salt; ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper; ½ teaspoon citric acid; 1 pint claret (or ½ pint port and ½ pint sherry)

Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Store Sauce for Roast Pork, Goose, & C

Ingredients

2 ounces green sage, chopped fine
1 ounce lemon peel, shaved thin
1 ounce eschalots, chopped
1 ounce coarse sea salt
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
½ teaspoon citric acid
1 pint claret (or ½ pint port and ½ pint sherry)

Directions

Make the sauce

Combine sage, lemon peel, eschalots, salt, cayenne pepper, and citric acid in a jar.
Pour in the claret (or port and sherry) and shake well.
Let the mixture steep for two weeks, shaking it daily.

Settle and bottle

After two weeks, let it sit for one day to settle.
Pour off the clear liquid into a bottle and cork it tightly.

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.

Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together887 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,273 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Pepper + sherrytop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Green sage: Supplies the herbal aroma that the steeping liquid picks up.
Lemon peel: Adds bright citrus aroma and oils to the steeping liquid.
Eschalots: Contribute savoury, mildly sharp flavour as they steep in the wine.
Claret: Forms the liquid base that extracts flavour from the solids over time.
Citric acid: Adds sharpness that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Let the mixture steep for two weeks, shaking it daily. Flavour is pulled out of the herbs, peel and shallot slowly by the liquid. Shaking daily keeps the solids in contact with the liquid so extraction is even, and cutting the steeping short leaves the sauce weak and unevenly flavoured.

Swap the sage

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

Thymefits better
Parsleyfits better
Marjoramfits better
Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, pepper, sherry. 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.

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

Tomato Soup526 recipes

Brown Bread461 recipes

Mutton Broth292 recipes

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Store Sauce for Roast Pork, Goose, & C