Skip to main content
Sauce

Garlic Sauce

A sauce made by combining minced garlic with butter and melted butter or beef gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Garlic Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound the garlic cloves with the piece of butter until well combined.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve or cloth.

  3. Stir the garlic butter into the melted butter or beef gravy, or use garlic vinegar instead.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Garlic + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Garlic cloves
Provides the main pungent, aromatic flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Carries the garlic flavour and adds richness and a smooth texture to the sauce.
Beef gravy
Adds savoury depth and moisture when used in place of melted butter.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a fine sieve or cloth. Pressing the pounded garlic and butter through a fine sieve or cloth breaks down fibres and small garlic pieces, giving a smooth sauce without coarse bits that could taste harsh when stirred in.

Swap the garlic

The recipe marks garlic as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, butter, nutmeg, vinegar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, butter, nutmeg, 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes