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Sauce

Sauce for Devilled Meats

A sauce made with butter, pepper, mustard, salt, port, lemon, and tomato juice, served hot with devilled meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Devilled Meats

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the sauce

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a deep dish, combine butter, mixed pepper, flour mustard, and salt.

  3. Melt the butter in the oven.

  4. Once melted, pour in the port, lemon juice, and tomato juice.

Finish and serve

  1. As the meat is finished grilling, add it to the sauce and let it remain in the oven for a few minutes.

  2. Serve very hot.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts to form the rich fat base that carries the other flavours.
Port
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Tomatoes
Contribute acidity and moisture to the sauce.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce.

The step that matters

Melting the butter in the oven. Butter can brown or burn quickly at high heat, and its milk solids can scorch. Watch it closely and remove it once melted so the sauce keeps a clean, mild flavour.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Kalefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, flour, mustard, lemon. 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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