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Eschalot Sauce for Boiled Mutton

A sauce made from eschalots, mutton liquor, vinegar, pepper, salt, butter, and optional lemon peel and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Eschalot Sauce for Boiled Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the finely chopped eschalots and the mutton liquor in a small saucepan.

  2. Bring to a boil and let simmer for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the vinegar, pepper, coarse sea salt, and the butter rolled in flour, then stir until it boils.

  4. Add a little lemon peel and finely chopped parsley, if desired.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eschalots
Provide the main aromatic flavour as they soften in the hot liquor.
Mutton liquor
Forms the savoury liquid base that carries the flavours of the sauce.
Butter rolled in flour
Flour thickens the liquid as it boils, and the butter adds richness and body.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter rolled in flour until it boils. Flour needs to be heated while stirred to thicken the liquid smoothly. If it is added without stirring or not brought to a boil, it can clump and leave the sauce floury and thin.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, vinegar, pepper, walnut, butter, flour, parsley):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Cherryfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, vinegar, pepper, walnut, butter, flour, parsley. 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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