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Lyonnaise Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with onion, butter, broth, lemon, salt, cayenne, and parsley, served with hashed meat on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lyonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, brown the finely sliced onion in melted butter.

  2. Add the tomato sauce and strong broth or leftover soup.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice, salt, cayenne pepper, and chopped parsley, mix well and boil for 12 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with hashed meat on toast.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Spanish onion
Softens and browns in butter, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Melted butter
Carries the onion as it browns, adding richness and aroma.
Tomato sauce
Forms the main body of the sauce and adds acidity and savoury flavour.
Strong broth or leftover soup
Adds liquid and savoury depth, thinning the tomato base into a sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the tomato and broth flavours.

The step that matters

Mix well and boil for 12 minutes. Boiling reduces the liquid and concentrates the flavours, while stirring prevents the tomato base from scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, tomato, sauce, lemon, pepper, parsley):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tomato, sauce, lemon, 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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