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Sauce Bordelaise

A French sauce made with garlic, herbs, white wine, Spanish sauce, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sauce Bordelaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine garlic, chervil, tarragon, bay leaves, lemon, cloves, oil, and white wine.

  2. Reduce the mixture by half over low heat.

  3. Add the Spanish sauce and boil for 30 minutes, skimming off grease.

  4. Pour in another ⅓ cup of white wine and boil for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add lemon juice, strain the sauce, and return it to the heat.

  2. Stir in the chopped mushrooms and 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. Chervil + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tarragon + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

  3. Chervil + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together358 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  5. Clove + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Spanish sauce
Forms the savoury base that the wine and herbs reduce into.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and reduces to concentrate the flavour.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and body to the finished sauce.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Skimming off grease while boiling the Spanish sauce. Fat rises to the surface during a long simmer and, if left in, makes the sauce greasy and cloudy. Skimming removes it so the sauce stays clean-tasting and smooth.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, chervil, tarragon, lemon, white wine, sauce, mushroom):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, chervil, tarragon, lemon, white wine, sauce, mushroom. 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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