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Sauce for Meat Loaf or Fish

A sauce made with green peppers, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, olives, and Hiawatha juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Sauce for Meat Loaf or Fish

Ingredients

Directions

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

  2. Add the chopped onion and cook until translucent.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute.

  4. Add the Hiawatha juice, chopped tomatoes, mushrooms, sugar, garlic, and olives.

  5. Season with Nokomis pepper and salt.

  6. Cook until the sauce thickens to a gravy-like consistency.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and juice.
Butter
Carries the onion and flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity and body, giving the sauce its base flavor.
Mushrooms
Add savory, meaty flavor and soft texture to the sauce.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Cook the flour into the butter. Cooking the flour briefly in the melted butter removes its raw taste and lets it thicken the liquid smoothly rather than forming lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, butter, tomato, mushroom, sugar, clove):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter, tomato, mushroom, sugar, clove. 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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