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Sauce

Brown Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, mushrooms, onion, flour, ketchup, stock, and browning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Brown Sauce

Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Heat the butter in a pan until smoking hot.

  2. Fry the chopped onion and mushrooms until brown, but not burnt.

  3. Add the flour and mix well.

Finish the sauce

  1. Slowly add the stock and browning to prevent lumps.

  2. Boil for ten minutes.

  3. Strain the sauce and season with salt and pepper.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot butter and liquid.
Stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce that the flour thickens.
Butter
Carries heat into the vegetables and helps the flour form a smooth paste.
Browning
Darkens the sauce's color and adds a deeper, savoury flavor.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity that round out the sauce's flavor.
Onion
Browns in the butter to build savoury, aromatic flavor in the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the stock slowly. Flour clumps when liquid hits it all at once. Adding the stock gradually while stirring lets each starch granule separate and hydrate, giving a smooth, lump-free sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mushroom, flour, ketchup, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, flour, ketchup, 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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