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Bordelaise Sauce

A red wine and onion sauce with herbs, butter, flour, broth, and blanched marrow.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Bordelaise Sauce

Why it works: Chicken and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,148 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Bordelaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the reduction

  1. In a pan, combine red wine and chopped onions; add a small bouquet of herbs.

  2. Place the pan over a stove and reduce the mixture by boiling until halved.

  3. Pour the reduced mixture into a bowl.

Build and finish the sauce

  1. Melt butter in the pan, then add flour, bay leaf, and whole peppercorns; stir and cook for 5 minutes.

  2. Add broth, beef extract, and the contents of the bowl; cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Season with salt and cayenne pepper, then strain the sauce.

  4. Add blanched marrow slices to the sauce and 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.

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. Chicken + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red wine
Provides acidity and depth of flavour as it reduces.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour in the roux base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter into a roux.
Chicken or veal broth
Forms the liquid body of the sauce.
Blanched marrow
Adds richness and a soft, meaty texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the wine by half. Boiling off water concentrates the wine's acidity and flavour, so the sauce tastes deep rather than thin. Reducing too little leaves a weak, watery base, while overreducing can make it harsh or overly strong once the broth is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red wine, butter, flour, chicken, beef, pepper):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red wine, butter, flour, chicken, beef, 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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