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Sauce

Sauce Bordelaise

A rich brown gravy sauce with shallots, claret, lemon, butter, parsley, and marrow or beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Sauce Bordelaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Combine flour, butter, and brown gravy in a saucepan; bring to a boil and simmer for about 30 minutes.

  2. Combine chopped shallots and claret in another pan; boil down until reduced to ¼ of its volume.

  3. Strain the brown sauce into the shallot mixture and boil for 10 minutes; season to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Add lemon juice, stir in the piece of butter, and add chopped parsley.

  2. At the last moment, add parboiled marrow or beef pieces.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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, giving it body as it simmers with the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Rich brown gravy
Forms the savoury base that the sauce is built on.
Shallots
Add a mild sweetness and aromatic depth after reducing with the wine.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour as it reduces into the sauce.
Lemon juice
Brightens the sauce and balances its richness with acidity.

The step that matters

Reducing the shallots and claret. Boiling the wine down until it is about a quarter of its volume concentrates its acidity and flavour. If it is under-reduced, the sauce will taste thin and sharp.

“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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