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Spiced Sauce

A savory sauce made with onion, flour, boiling water, parsley, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, cloves, allspice, mace, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Heat the fat in a kettle.

  2. Add the chopped onion and cook until medium brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and mix until smooth.

Finish the sauce

  1. Gradually add the boiling water and the parsley, stirring until it reaches a boil.

  2. Add the lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, ground cloves, ground allspice, and ground mace.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Strain the sauce.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Parsley + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Chopped onion
Browning in the fat builds a deeper, sweeter flavour base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the spices.
Ground cloves
Contributes warm, pungent aroma that defines the sauce's spiced character.

The step that matters

Gradually add the boiling water. Adding the hot liquid slowly while stirring lets the flour disperse evenly and hydrate without forming lumps, giving a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, flour, parsley, lemon, sauce, clove, allspice):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, flour, parsley, lemon, sauce, clove, allspice. 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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