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Sauce

Green Sauce for Ducklings or Green Geese

A green sauce made from spinach or sorrel, sugar, egg yolk, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Green Sauce for Ducklings or Green Geese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the greens

  1. Wash the spinach or sorrel thoroughly.

  2. Bruise the greens in a marble mortar.

  3. Strain the juice through a fine cloth.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the juice with sugar, egg yolk, and vinegar.

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. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Spinach + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together866 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Spinach + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,323 recipes

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

  5. Spinach + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach or sorrel
Provides the green color and the herbal, slightly sharp flavor that forms the sauce's base.
Raw egg yolk
Adds richness and body, emulsifying with the juice to give the sauce a smooth, thick texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the yolk.
Loaf sugar
Adds a small amount of sweetness to balance the sharpness of the vinegar and greens.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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