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Sauce

Chateaubriand Sauce

A sauce made with sherry, glaze, brown sauce, butter, lemon juice, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Chateaubriand Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Reduce the sherry in a saucepan until it is half the original volume.

  2. Add the glaze, Brown Sauce or Espagnole, butter, lemon juice, and chopped parsley.

  3. Heat the mixture until very hot, then 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Sherry
Reduction concentrates its flavor, adding depth and a sweet, nutty aroma to the sauce.
Glaze
Adds concentrated meaty flavor and body, giving the sauce richness and a glossy finish.
Brown sauce or espagnole
Forms the thickened base that gives the sauce its body and savory structure.
Butter
Adds fat for silky mouthfeel and a rounded, rich finish when melted in.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savory sauce and balances its fat.

The step that matters

Reduce the sherry to half its volume. Reducing concentrates the sherry's flavor and removes excess liquid. Stopping too early leaves the sauce thin and sharp; reducing too far can make it overly intense.

“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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