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Sauce

Garlic Sauce

A sauce made by boiling garlic with vinegar, stock, ham, then reducing, straining, adding sauce, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,090 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Garlic Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the garlic cloves in white vinegar and white stock with the piece of ham.

  2. Reduce the mixture, then strain it off.

  3. Add either white or brown sauce to the strained liquid.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and sugar, and omit the vinegar.

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. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  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. Vinegar + hamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

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

What each ingredient does

Garlic cloves
Boiling mellows garlic's sharp bite and leaves a rounded, aromatic flavour in the liquid.
White vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the stock and ham.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries and extracts flavour from the garlic and ham.
Lean ham
Contributes savoury, meaty depth to the liquid as it simmers.

The step that matters

Reduce the mixture, then strain it off. Reducing concentrates flavour and thickens the liquid. Ham and stock already contain salt, so over-reducing can make the sauce intensely salty or bitter. Taste before adding any seasoning.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, ham, pepper, sugar. 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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