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Cold Meat Sauces

A sauce made by pounding mace, salt, orange rind, shallots, then steeping in sherry, verjuice, lemon juice, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Cold Meat Sauces

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Pound the mace, salt, orange rind, and shallots together.

  2. Put the mixture into a jar.

  3. Pour the sherry, verjuice, lemon juice, and vinegar over the mixture.

  4. Cover the jar tightly.

Cook and finish

  1. Place the jar in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) for four to five hours.

  2. Strain the mixture through fine muslin.

  3. Bottle the strained sauce for later use.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sherry + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Vinegar + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sherry + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Shallots
Add savoury depth and aroma as they soften and release flavour into the liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps extract and preserve the flavours in the sauce.
Sherry
Contributes sweetness and aromatic complexity to the liquid base.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that balances the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Covering the jar tightly before the long, low oven time. A loose lid lets the liquid evaporate and concentrate unevenly, and the sealed jar keeps the aromatics in and the flavours blended over the hours at low heat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, lemon, vinegar, orange, shallot):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, lemon, vinegar, orange, shallot. 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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