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Reforme Sauce

A sauce made with thick brown sauce, port, red currant jelly, anchovy, tarragon vinegar, and optional tomato, served over cutlet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Reforme Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the thick brown sauce in a saucepan.

  2. Add port, red currant jelly, anchovy, tarragon vinegar, and tomato if using.

  3. Stir well and heat until hot.

Serve

  1. Serve poured over the cutlet.

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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Tarragon + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together391 recipes

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

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Red currant + tomatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Sauce + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body, balancing the sharp port and vinegar.
Port
Adds depth and fruity sweetness to the brown sauce.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth that enriches the sauce without a distinct fishy taste.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and aromatic tang that brightens the rich brown sauce.

The step that matters

Stir well and heat until hot. Adding acidic and sweet ingredients to a hot sauce can cause uneven flavour if not stirred in fully. Jelly melts and disperses only with steady stirring and gentle heat, so the sauce stays smooth and does not scorch on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, red currant, anchovy, tarragon, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, red currant, anchovy, tarragon, vinegar. 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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