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Sauce

French Sauce After the Italian Manner

A sauce of parsley, scallions, mrel leaf, garlic, loaves, flour, white wine, broth, salt, and pepper simmered for 30 minutes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

French Sauce After the Italian Manner

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine parsley, scallions, mrel leaf, garlic, and loaves in a pot.

  2. Add a pinch of flour mixed with white wine, broth, salt, and whole pepper.

  3. Bring to a boil and cook for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Skim off the fat and remove the herbs.

  2. If the sauce is too thin, add a little flour and 1-2 tablespoons of onion juice.

  3. Serve the sauce warm.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sauce.
Broth or cullis
Provides the liquid base and savory depth of the sauce.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, garlic, flour, white wine, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, garlic, flour, white wine, 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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