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Sauce

Grill Sauce

A sauce made from clear drawn gravy, butter, mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, mustard, capers, cayenne, pepper, and chili vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Grill Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the clear drawn gravy and fresh butter rubbed smooth with flour.

  2. Add mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, made mustard, minced capers, essence of Cayenne, and black pepper. Simmer for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour some sauce over the grilled dish and serve the rest in a tureen.

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. Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Clear drawn gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and body, helping the sauce feel smooth.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savory flavor to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce.
Made mustard
Adds sharpness and a bit of pungency.

The step that matters

Rubbing the butter smooth with flour. Flour mixed into butter forms a paste that thickens the liquid without lumps when it is whisked in. Added loose, the flour clumps and the sauce stays grainy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mushroom, ketchup, mustard, capers, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Red currantfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, ketchup, mustard, capers, pepper, 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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