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Sauce

Sauce Hachee Aux Cornichons

A French sauce made with butter, flour, minced gherkins, salt, pepper, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sauce Hachee Aux Cornichons

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter and add the flour.

  2. Stir in the minced gherkins, salt, and pepper.

  3. Moisten the mixture with stock and cook over low heat.

  4. Thicken the sauce until it reaches the desired consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve warm.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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 sauce by absorbing liquid when cooked with the butter.
Butter
Forms the fat base that the flour cooks into, adding richness and smooth texture.
Minced gherkins
Add the sharp, acidic flavour that defines this sauce.
Stock
Adds liquid and savoury depth, letting the flour thicken into a sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce. Cooking over low heat while the flour is hydrated lets starch swell gradually, giving a smooth texture. High heat can scorch the flour or form lumps, so the sauce should be cooked gently and stirred.

“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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