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Sicilian Sauce

A savory sauce made with coriander, cloves, gravy, ham essence, lemon peel, bay leaves, garlic, celery, white wine, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Coriander and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,498 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sicilian Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spices

  1. In a mortar, bruise the coriander seed and cloves well.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the bruised spices, gravy, essence of ham, and lemon peel.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add the bay leaves, garlic, and celery.

  3. Boil until reduced by half.

  4. Add the white wine and strain through a fine sieve.

  5. Stir in the butter and flour until well combined.

  6. Return to heat, stirring until the sauce thickens.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with roast fowl or meat.

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. Coriander + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,498 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Coriander + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,474 recipes

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

  4. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Coriander + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and helps give it a smooth, glossy body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when stirred in and heated, giving it body.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the reduced sauce.
Essence of ham
Provides concentrated savoury, meaty flavour as the sauce base.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding body and savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter and flour, then heat until thickened. Flour needs heat to gelatinise its starch and thicken the sauce. Stirring keeps it smooth and prevents lumps, so the sauce must be returned to heat and stirred until it thickens.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coriander, clove, ham, lemon, celery, white wine, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coriander, clove, ham, lemon, celery, white wine, butter. 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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