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Sauce

Spanish Sauce

A mushroom and vegetable sauce made with 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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Spanish Sauce

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 ↓

Spanish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Fry the mushrooms, carrot, onion, and shallot in 1 tablespoon of butter until browned, then drain off the butter.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt 2 ounces of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add 2 ounces of flour and stir until pale brown.

  3. Add 1 pint of stock, the fried vegetables, and ⅓ cup of tomato sauce to the saucepan.

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

  5. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

Finish

  1. 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.

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. 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
Browned with butter, flour thickens the stock into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Butter
Carries the frying and forms the roux base that flour thickens into the sauce.
Mushrooms
Browning them adds savoury, deep flavour that gives the sauce depth.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and sweetness, plus a deeper colour to the finished sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the roux thickens and the vegetables flavour.

The step that matters

Stir the flour until pale brown. Cooking flour in butter drives off raw starch taste and thickens the sauce; stirring constantly prevents scorching and lumps, which would make the sauce bitter or grainy.

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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