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Sauce Russe

A sauce made with ham, shallots, butter, wine, velouté, horseradish, and spices, finished with butter and meat glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauce Russe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Fry the ham and shallots for a few seconds.

  3. Add the bay leaf, thyme, and white wine. Cover the pan.

  4. Reduce the liquid to half.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir in the velouté or allemande sauce.

  2. Cook gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the herbs.

  4. Add horseradish.

  5. Season with cayenne and nutmeg.

  6. Strain through a sieve.

  7. Reheat the sauce.

  8. Stir in fresh butter and meat glaze.

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. Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Velouté or allemande sauce
Forms the smooth, thickened body of the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and depth as it reduces into the base.
Horseradish
Provides sharp, pungent heat that cuts through the richness.
Meat glaze
Adds concentrated savoury flavour and body.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a glossy finish when stirred in.

The step that matters

Reheat the sauce. Once fresh butter and meat glaze go in, the sauce must be warmed gently rather than boiled. Overheating can cause the butter to separate and make the sauce look greasy and broken.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, shallot, butter, thyme, white wine, sauce, pepper):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, shallot, butter, thyme, white wine, sauce, pepper. 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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