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Salmis Sauce

A sauce made with red currant jelly, Espagnole sauce, game stock, shallots, bay leaf, thyme, mushroom trimmings, port wine, and sweet oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,476 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Salmis Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the oil in a stewpan.

  2. Fry the shallots until golden.

  3. Add the bay leaf, thyme, mushroom trimmings, and port wine.

  4. Cover and cook for 5 minutes.

  5. Stir in the stock and sauce.

  6. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  7. Remove any scum.

  8. Strain the sauce through a fine cloth.

  9. Season.

  10. Add the red currant jelly.

  11. Warm up and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Red currant + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together121 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Shallot + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Espagnole sauce
Forms the base of the sauce, giving body and a rich, savoury flavour.
Game stock
Adds meaty depth and liquid, thinning the sauce while building savoury flavour.
Port wine
Adds acidity and sweetness, and its flavour concentrates as it cooks.
Shallots
Soften and sweeten when fried, adding aromatic background flavour to the sauce.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a tart fruitiness that balances the rich, savoury sauce.
Sweet oil
Carries heat and fries the shallots, helping them brown evenly.

The step that matters

Remove any scum. Scum rising while the sauce simmers can cloud the sauce and carry off-flavours. Skimming it off keeps the sauce clear and clean-tasting before straining.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, shallot, thyme, mushroom, port wine):

  1. Lemonfits about as well
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Red currantthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, shallot, thyme, mushroom, port wine. 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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