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Espagnole Sauce

A rich brown sauce made with veal, onions, stock, herbs, and thickening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Espagnole Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Cover the bottom of a stewpan with halved onions.

  2. Add chopped veal and 2 cups of water; simmer gently for 1.5 hours until dark brown.

Build the sauce

  1. Add 8 cups of White Stock, parsley, thyme, bay leaves, shallots, carrots, onions, and mushrooms; simmer for 1 hour.

  2. Strain through a cloth and add 2 ounces of Brown Thickening for each quart of stock; boil and strain through a sieve.

Finish

  1. Return the sauce to the stewpan and simmer until the butter rises; skim off the fat.

  2. Add more Stock as needed and simmer for another 30 minutes, skimming off any greasy parts.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle
Releases gelatin and savory flavor as it simmers, giving the sauce body and depth.
Brown thickening
Starch thickens the stock so the sauce coats the back of a spoon.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries all the flavors and makes up most of the sauce.
Onions
Caramelized onions add sweetness and color to the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy umami flavor that deepens the sauce.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat and surface. Fat and impurities rise to the surface as the sauce simmers. Skimming them off keeps the sauce clean-tasting, clear and not greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, parsley, thyme, shallot, carrot, mushroom):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, parsley, thyme, shallot, carrot, mushroom. 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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