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Walnut Sauce

A savory sauce made with stock, butter, flour, onions, pickled walnuts, walnut vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Walnut Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Fry the onions until lightly browned.

  3. Sprinkle in the flour and fry slowly until it turns a nut-brown color.

  4. Add the stock and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  5. Strain the sauce and return it to the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with salt and pepper, then add the vinegar and walnuts, diced.

  2. Serve with braised mutton or any dish that requires a sharp sauce.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Butter
Carries the onions and flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Onions
Browning in the butter adds savoury depth and sweetness to the sauce.
Pickled walnuts
Add a distinctive tangy, savoury flavour to the finished sauce.
Walnut vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the butter and flour base.

The step that matters

Frying the flour to nut-brown. Flour cooked slowly in fat toasts gradually, developing colour and nutty flavour. Cooking too fast or too briefly leaves a pale, raw-tasting sauce, or it scorches and turns bitter if overheated.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, onion, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, onion, vinegar, 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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