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Salmis Sauce

A sauce made from game trimmings, ham, shallots, herbs, cloves, claret, lemon, butter, flour, stock, and Liebig extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,677 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Salmis Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Chop the carcases and trimmings of the game.

  2. Put them in a small saucepan with the ham, shallots, herbs, cloves, pepper, and salt.

  3. Add the wine and enough stock to cover the mixture.

  4. Boil gently for 2 hours, then strain the mixture.

Finish the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour, and mix well.

  2. Pour a little of the strained sauce into the butter and flour mixture, stirring constantly.

  3. Add the lemon juice and serve.

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. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Game trimmings and carcases
Provide the main meaty flavour that the whole sauce is built on.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and carries flavour, and forms the base of the thickening roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and then mixed with the liquid.
Claret
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the braising liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury sauce.
Liebig company’s extract
Adds concentrated savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the strained sauce into the butter and flour. Adding liquid to a roux all at once or without constant stirring can leave lumps. Adding a little liquid first and stirring constantly lets the starch disperse evenly so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, shallot, clove, butter, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, shallot, clove, butter, flour. 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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