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Espagnole or Spanish Sauce

A classic French brown sauce made with stock, ham or bacon, butter, flour, vegetables, herbs, tomato pulp, and optional sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Espagnole or Spanish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the ham cut into small pieces and fry for a few minutes.

  3. Add the sliced vegetables, herbs, and spices.

  4. Stir over low heat for about 5 minutes.

  5. Add the flour.

  6. Brown the flour carefully.

Simmer and strain

  1. Stir in the stock, tomato pulp, and sherry (if using).

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Move the saucepan to the side of the fire.

  4. Let it simmer slowly for about 30 minutes.

  5. Skim off the fat.

  6. Strain the sauce through a cloth.

Finish and serve

  1. Season.

  2. Warm it up.

  3. Serve.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 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

Butter
Forms a roux with the flour, providing fat and a rich base for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the stock, and browning it adds color and nutty flavor.
Stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, carrying flavor and setting its consistency as it reduces.
Tomato pulp
Adds acidity, body, and a deeper color to the finished sauce.
Ham
Adds savory, salty depth as it fries in the butter before the liquid is added.
Carrot and onion
Sweeten and add aromatic flavor as they cook slowly with the fat and herbs.

The step that matters

Browning the flour carefully. Flour browned too far turns bitter and dark, and it thickens less well. Gentle, even browning in the fat builds color and nutty flavor without scorching.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, butter, flour, carrot, clove, parsley, thyme):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, flour, carrot, clove, parsley, thyme. 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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