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Hungarian Sauce

A savory sauce made with onions, salt, paprika, white wine, veloute, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Hungarian Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pan, gently fry the chopped onions in butter without coloring them.

  2. Season with table salt and paprika.

  3. Moisten with white wine and add a small bundle of herbs.

  4. Reduce the wine by two-thirds and remove the herbs.

  5. Add the veloute and boil moderately for 5 minutes.

  6. Rub the sauce through a sieve and finish with butter.

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. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + white winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,535 recipes

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Softened in butter to build a sweet, savoury base for the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, reduced to concentrate its flavour before the veloute goes in.
Veloute
Forms the body of the sauce, thickened by its starch and set by gentle boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy finish when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Rub the sauce through a sieve and finish with butter. Pressing the sauce through a sieve removes the softened onion pieces for a smooth texture. Butter stirred in off the heat emulsifies into the sauce, giving a glossy, rounded finish rather than a greasy one.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, butter):

  1. Onionthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Leekfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, butter. 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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