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Brown Sauces

A savory sauce made with mushrooms, carrot, onion, shallot, butter, flour, stock, tomato sauce, and optional sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and shallot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Brown Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash, peel, and finely chop the mushrooms, carrot, onion, and shallot.

  2. Dry the vegetables and fry them in 1 tablespoon of butter until golden brown, then drain off the butter.

Make the sauce

  1. In a copper saucepan, melt 2 ounces of butter and 2 ounces of flour, stirring over heat until pale brown.

  2. Add 1 pint of stock, the fried vegetables, and ⅓ cup of tomato sauce; simmer uncovered for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

  4. For Chateaubriand, add ⅓ cup of sherry and omit the stock.

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. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Cooked in butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Butter
Carries the browning of the vegetables and forms the roux with flour.
Mushrooms
Add savoury, earthy depth and body to the sauce as they cook down.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity, colour and savoury depth to the finished sauce.
Stock
Provides the liquid that the roux thickens into a sauce.

The step that matters

Melt the butter and flour until pale brown. Cooking the roux long enough cooks out the raw flour taste and thickens well, but over-browning weakens its thickening power and darkens the sauce. Stir steadily over moderate heat so it does not scorch.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, carrot, onion, shallot, butter, flour, sauce):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, carrot, onion, shallot, butter, flour, sauce. 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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