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French Sauce

A savory sauce made with olive oil, onion, mushrooms, garlic, flour, stock, white wine, herbs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

French Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat 1 to 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the finely chopped onion, mushrooms, and garlic (if using).

  3. Cook for a few minutes until softened.

  4. Stir in 1 tablespoon of flour and gradually pour in 1 cup of stock and ⅓ cup of white wine.

  5. Stir until the sauce is perfectly smooth.

  6. Add salt, pepper, and the parsley and laurel leaves.

  7. Remove the parsley and laurel before serving.

  8. Allow the sauce to boil gently for 30 minutes and serve hot.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the stock and wine into a smooth sauce body.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness as it softens in the oil.
Mushrooms
Contribute savory, earthy flavor and moisture as they cook down.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that brightens the sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the sauce's flavor.

The step that matters

Stir the flour smoothly into the liquid. Flour clumps if liquid is added too fast or not stirred in well. Stirring while gradually adding the stock and wine lets the starch disperse and hydrate evenly, giving a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the garlic

The recipe marks garlic as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, onion, mushroom, flour, white wine, pepper, parsley):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Garlicthe original
  3. Marjoramfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, onion, mushroom, flour, white wine, pepper, parsley. 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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