Seasoned Advice Asked on July 3, 2021
When I buy a premade pepper cream sauce at the grocery store it tastes good enough. It is peppery, creamy and salty. But when I try to make this myself I can’t get it to taste at least neutral salty or peppery. Either the taste is really weak or too strong.
I use this recipe:
Now I could experiment, but I’ve done so a lot. The nice peppery creamy taste comes in very late when I make it myself. When I buy it premade it always tastes salty and creamy immediately and then the peppery kicks in. How do they do this? How can I make the taste better; what am I missing?
I haven't made peppercorn sauce for many years, but from recollection, how you combine the pepper and the fat is the key. Many sauces use cream, but it's not completely necessary. The pepper flavour is staying in the peppercorns, which is why it doesn't come on early.
I suspect you need to cook the pepper in the butter before making the roux. This will extract the flavour into the sauce better, as piperine (the most important component of the flavour) isn't really soluble in water.
Some recipes use alcohol, which also dissolves piperine, e.g. this one (in French) makes a reduction using cognac and adds the butter later.
White pepper is also quite common; I can't instantly find a recipe but some use ground white pepper in a cream-based sauce, with whole black or green peppercorns. If you're using ground white pepper, buy it fresh; it doesn't keep its flavour very well.
As for the saltiness, are you adding as much as the commercial sauce? Commercial sauces often use shocking amounts of salt, but you might not need as much once the pepper flavour is dealt with.
Answered by Chris H on July 3, 2021
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