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Carp Sauce

A savory sauce made by simmering carp with bacon, veal, ham, onions, carrot, parsnip, wine, broth, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,097 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Carp Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the carp pieces in a saucepan with bacon, veal, ham, onions, carrot, and parsnip.

  2. Cook until the fish catches a little color.

Make the sauce

  1. Add white wine, broth, cullis, parsley, chervil, garlic, spices, and bay leaf.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour, skimming regularly.

  3. Strain the sauce through a sieve.

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. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together774 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Parsnip + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together40 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsnip + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Carp
Provides the main fish body and flavor that the sauce is built around.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the rich meats.
Broth
Supplies the liquid base that carries and concentrates the flavors during simmering.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and release their flavor into the liquid.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky savory depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer for 1 hour, skimming regularly. Simmering gently extracts flavor slowly, while skimming removes foam and loose fat and impurities that would otherwise cloud the sauce and taste greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, carrot, parsnip, white wine, parsley, chervil):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, carrot, parsnip, white wine, parsley, chervil. 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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