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Sauce

Brown Sauce for Broiled Fowls and Meats

A brown sauce made with onions, vinegar, ketchup, butter, pepper, and salt for broiled fowls and meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brown Sauce for Broiled Fowls and Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, combine chopped onions, vinegar, coloring, water, Harvey's sauce or ketchup, pepper, and salt.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook until it thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the melted butter and serve with broiled fowls or meats.

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

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

  2. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy body to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the butter.
Harvey's sauce or ketchup
Adds savoury, tangy depth and some sweetness to the sauce.
Onions
Adds aromatic flavor to the sauce base.

The step that matters

Stir in the melted butter. Butter is fat that should be stirred in gradually off the heat or at low heat so it emulsifies smoothly. Adding it to a rapidly boiling sauce can split it into a greasy, separated texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sauce, pepper, butter. 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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