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Sauce

Olive Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, beef stock, Worcestershire sauce, and chopped olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,220 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Olive Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and brown it again.

  3. Pour in the beef stock and stir until smooth and thick.

  4. Season to taste.

  5. Stir in the Worcestershire sauce and chopped olives.

  6. Simmer for five minutes.

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. Beef + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,220 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + olivetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,887 recipes

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

  5. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Butter
Browns to add a nutty, rich flavour that forms the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the stock, giving it body.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which the flour thickens into a smooth gravy.
Olives
Add a salty, briny flavour and bits of texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour cooked in butter must be stirred constantly until it turns golden. Undercooked flour tastes raw and pasty, while over-browned flour turns bitter and dark.

“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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