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Gravies and Sauces

A simple oil and vinegar sauce seasoned with pepper and salt, optionally flavored with pickled beans or horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and horseradish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Gravies and Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the oil and vinegar.

  2. Add ground black pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  3. Stir the mixture well.

  4. Optionally, add pickled French beans or gherkins, and grated horseradish.

  5. Serve immediately.

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. Beans + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together78 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oil
Forms the body of the dressing and carries flavour, giving it a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil.

Swap the beans

The recipe marks beans as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, horseradish):

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, horseradish. 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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