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Sauce

Brown Sauces

A savory sauce made from 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. Fry the chopped mushrooms, carrot, onion, and shallot in 1 tablespoon of butter until browned, but not burnt.

  2. Drain off the butter.

Make the sauce

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

  2. Add 1 pint of stock, the fried vegetables, and ½ cup of tomato sauce.

  3. Simmer gently for 30 minutes with the cover off.

  4. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

  5. 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

Mushrooms
Adds earthy flavour and savoury depth as they brown in the butter.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter into a roux.
Butter
Carries the frying and forms the fat base of the roux.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity, colour and savoury sweetness to the sauce.
Stock
Provides the liquid that the roux thickens into sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the roux until pale brown. Cooking flour in fat until pale brown removes raw starch taste and helps it thicken smoothly. Stirring over heat keeps it from scorching and turning bitter.

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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