Skip to main content
Bread

Brown Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, onions, carrots, parsley, flour, water, beef extract, tomato catsup, caramel coloring, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Brown Sauce

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,053 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add the chopped vegetables and cook for 10 minutes, being careful not to burn the butter.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook until it is light brown.

  4. Gradually add the boiling water, beef extract, salt, tomato catsup, and caramel coloring.

  5. Cook for 5 minutes and then 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,606 recipes

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

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,448 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 fat and liquid.
Butter
Carries the flavor of the vegetables and gives the sauce richness.
Chopped vegetables
Release sweetness and aroma into the fat as they cook, flavoring the sauce.
Caramel coloring
Deepens the sauce's brown color.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and vegetables gently. Butter that burns turns bitter and dark, and that flavor carries into the whole sauce. Gentle heat lets the vegetables soften and sweeten without scorching.

Flavor stand-ins for the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, carrot, parsley, flour, beef):

  1. Leekbetter flavor fit
  2. Turnipbetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, carrot, parsley, flour, beef. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

More brown sauce recipes

Stewed Cod in 12Italian 6Mushroom 6Sharp 5Pheasant in 4Piquant 4 See all 188 →

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes