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Wow Wow Sauce for Stewed or Bouilli Beep

A sauce made with butter, flour, beef broth, vinegar, mushroom ketchup or port wine, mustard, parsley, and pickled cucumbers or walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Wow Wow Sauce for Stewed or Bouilli Beep

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until combined.

  3. Add the beef broth and bring to a simmer.

  4. Mix in the vinegar, mushroom ketchup or port wine, and mustard.

  5. Simmer until thickened to your liking.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the parsley and pickles to warm them.

  2. Serve over the beef or in a sauce tureen.

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. Mustard + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Parsley + cucumbertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavor as the base of the roux.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Beef broth
Forms the liquid body of the sauce and adds savory beef flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savory sauce.
Mushroom ketchup or port wine
Adds deep savory and sweet notes to the sauce.
Pickled cucumbers or walnuts
Adds tangy or nutty bite that contrasts with the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer until thickened to your liking. Flour must simmer long enough to swell and set fully, or the sauce stays thin and tastes floury. Simmering also reduces the liquid, concentrating flavor. Stop when it coats a spoon.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, beef, vinegar, mushroom, mustard, cucumber):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, beef, vinegar, mushroom, mustard, cucumber. 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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