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Sauce

A Poivrade Sauce

A sauce made by flavoring rich brown gravy with ham, then adding pepper and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

A Poivrade Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Flavor the rich brown gravy with ham according to the recipe for Espagnole.

  2. Before serving, add a generous amount of pepper and ⅓ cup of vinegar.

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 + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Ham + vinegartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

  3. Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Rich brown gravy
Forms the body of the sauce and carries the other flavors.
Ham
Adds savory, salty depth to the gravy.
Pepper
Adds sharp aroma and gentle heat that cuts through the richness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy gravy.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar before serving. Acid is volatile and mellows when heated for long, so adding it just before serving keeps its sharpness. Adding it too early can leave the sauce flat or overly sour once reduced.

“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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