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Sauce

Italian Sauce

A quick Italian sauce made with salt, mustard, cayenne or paprika, olive oil, garlic, sour red wine, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,665 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Italian Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, combine salt, mustard, cayenne pepper (or paprika).

  2. Cream this mixture with olive oil.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir in the macerated garlic.

  2. Slowly add sour red wine and lemon juice, mixing well.

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. Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Olive oil
Provides fat and a smooth, rich body that carries the other flavours.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and sharp savoury flavour.
Sour red wine
Adds acidity and tangy flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that sharpens the sauce.
Mustard
Helps hold the oil and liquid acids together in a smooth emulsion.

The step that matters

Slowly add sour red wine and lemon juice. Acid added too quickly to oil can break the emulsion, so the sauce separates. Adding it slowly while mixing lets the mustard bind the oil and liquids into a smooth, stable sauce.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, olive, clove, garlic, red wine, lemon):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, olive, clove, garlic, red wine, lemon. 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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