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Brown Sauce

A thickened sauce made with stock, butter, flour, onions, ham, carrots, celery, herbs, and optional wine or mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Mary Ronald · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 28 ingredients
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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 cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Put a tablespoonful of chopped onion and a tablespoonful of butter in a saucepan on the fire. Let them both become brown; then add a tablespoonful of flour, and brown that also. Stir all the time.

  2. Put the butter in a saucepan; when hot add the chopped vegetables and ham, and let them brown; then add the flour, and let that brown. Stir constantly so it will not burn.

Make the sauce

  1. When well browned add slowly the stock, then the herbs, spices, salt, and pepper, and let cook for five minutes. Cover the saucepan.

  2. Add a cupful of beef or brown stock, and cook until the sauce is a little thickened. Season with pepper and salt. Strain it to remove the onion.

  3. Soak the gelatine in a half cupful of stock.

Simmer and finish

  1. Set it into a larger one containing hot water. Draw it to the side of the range to simmer slowly for two hours.

  2. Then stir in the soaked gelatine, and let stand another half hour.

  3. When ready to serve skim off the fat and strain.

Variations

  1. A sauce poivrade is made by adding to the brown sauce, at the same time that the stock is put in, a cupful of claret, two cloves, a bay-leaf, a little thyme and parsley.

  2. In place of claret, a teaspoonful of mustard, the juice of half a lemon, and a teaspoonful of tarragon vinegar gives a Robert sauce.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

1144Calories
69 gProtein
43 gFat
116 gCarbs

Counts 14 of 17 ingredients. The other 3 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 14 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Beef100g cooked250
Pork100g cooked242
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Carrot1 medium (61g)25
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Thyme1 tsp dried (1.4g)4
Mustard1 tsp (5g) yellow3
Vinegar1 tbsp (15ml) distilled3
Tarragon1 tsp dried (0.5g)2
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0
Saucenot in our table0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Mary Ronald. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

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

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Browns with the onion and flour to form the roux that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Forms a roux with the butter, thickening the sauce as it cooks.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying its flavour.
Gelatine
Softens the sauce so it sets slightly when cooled.
Chopped onion
Adds savoury depth as it browns in the butter, flavouring the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the butter, onion and flour. Flour must brown well and be stirred constantly; under-browned flour leaves a raw taste, while over-browned or burnt flour turns bitter and dark.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, onion, ham, carrot, parsley, pepper. 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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