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Sauce

A Simple Akd Quick Brown Sauce

A quick brown sauce made with onion, butter, garlic, celery, herbs, gelatin, water, beef extract, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 4,668 recipes mention both. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

A Simple Akd Quick Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, fry the chopped onion in butter until brown.

  2. Add garlic cloves, celery (or seeds), bouquet of herbs, and gelatin.

  3. Boil in water until the gelatin dissolves.

  4. Remove the liquid and stir in Liebig's extract of beef.

  5. Thicken with brown thickening and add coarse sea salt.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Celery + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Browns in butter to build the deep colour and savoury flavour of the sauce.
Gelatine
Dissolves into the liquid to give the sauce body and a silkier mouthfeel.
Liebig's extract of beef
Adds concentrated meaty flavour and savouriness to the sauce.
Brown thickening
Thickens the liquid so the sauce coats the back of a spoon.

The step that matters

Fry the onion in butter until brown. Browning the onion develops deeper, roasted flavours through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Pale onion gives a flat, weak-tasting sauce, so colour the onion fully before adding the water.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, celery, beef):

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, celery, beef. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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