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Sauce

Piquant Sauce

A spicy onion and chili sauce made with olive oil and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 29,058 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Piquant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine chopped young onions and chilies.

  2. Add salt if needed.

  3. Pour in the olive oil and vinegar.

  4. Mix until you achieve a thick sauce consistency.

  5. Serve with curry, cutlets, steaks, pork, cold meat, or fish.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together29,779 recipes

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

  4. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Vinegar + garlictop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Olive oil
Adds richness and body, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that brightens the onions and chilies.
Young onions
Supply the main aromatic base and pungent flavour.
Chilies
Supply heat and fresh pungency to the sauce.

“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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