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Sauce

Bordelaise Sauce

A red wine sauce with onions, herbs, broth, and marrow, finished with butter, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Bordelaise Sauce

Why it works: Chicken and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,148 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Bordelaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Reduce the wine

  1. Combine red wine and chopped onions in a chafing dish.

  2. Add the bouquet of herbs and heat until reduced by half.

  3. Pour the mixture into a bowl.

Make the sauce

  1. In the chafing dish, melt the butter.

  2. Stir in the flour, bay leaf, and whole peppercorns. Cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the broth, beef extract, and the contents of the bowl. Cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Season with salt and Cayenne pepper.

  5. Strain the sauce.

  6. Add the blanched marrow slices.

  7. 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.

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. Chicken + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour as it reduces into the sauce.
Butter
Melts with the flour to form a roux that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the butter into a roux.
Chicken or veal broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries its savoury flavour.
Blanched marrow
Adds richness and a soft, silky texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Reduce the wine by half. Reducing concentrates the wine's acidity and flavour before the broth is added. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and sharp, while over-reducing can make it too intense.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red wine, butter, flour, chicken, beef, pepper):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red wine, butter, flour, chicken, beef, 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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