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Sauce

Salmi of Cold Game

A sauce for cold game made with flour, lemon juice, port wine, butter, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Salmi of Cold Game

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin and joints from the cold game.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir to make a roux, cooking for a few minutes.

  3. Gradually add the brown stock, port wine, lemon juice, and season with pepper and salt.

  4. Add the shallot or onion and simmer for a few minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the game to the sauce and simmer for 10 minutes.

  2. Serve with fried croutons.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Port wine + shallottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms a roux with the butter that thickens the sauce.
Butter
Carries the flour into a roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds savoury body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Make the roux before adding liquid. Cooking the flour in butter for a few minutes removes its raw taste and lets it thicken evenly. Adding the stock too early can leave lumps.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, port wine, butter, pepper, shallot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, port wine, butter, pepper, shallot. 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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