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Sauce

Wow Wow Sauce Fob Stewed Ob Bouilli Beef

A sauce made with parsley, pickles or walnuts, butter, flour, beef broth, vinegar, mushroom ketchup or port wine, and mustard, served over stewed beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and mustard 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 Fob Stewed Ob Bouilli Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the parsley finely and prepare the pickles or walnuts.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth, then gradually add the beef broth.

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

  4. Let the sauce simmer until it thickens to your desired consistency.

  5. Add the parsley and pickles to warm them through.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce 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. Cucumber + mustardtop 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
Forms the fat base of the sauce and carries flavor into the liquid.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and broth.
Beef broth
Provides the liquid body and savory flavor of the sauce.
Pickled cucumbers or walnuts
Add texture and a tangy, briny bite to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, buttery sauce.

The step that matters

Let the sauce simmer until it thickens. Flour thickens only as it heats and its starch swells, so the sauce must simmer long enough to reach the desired consistency. Stopping early leaves it thin and floury-tasting.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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