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Sauce

Brown Sauces

A savory brown sauce made with stock, butter, flour, vegetables, ham or bacon, herbs, mushrooms, tomato sauce, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mushroom 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

  1. In a pan, fry the diced bacon or ham in the butter until slightly cooked.

  2. Add the diced vegetables and fry for 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook slowly until golden brown.

  4. Add the stock, tomato puree, seasoning, and herbs, then simmer gently for 1 hour, skimming frequently.

  5. Finally, add the sherry, bring to a boil, skim, and strain through a fine sieve.

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. Shallot + mushroomtop 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. Flour + shallottop 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

Butter
Carries the frying of the bacon and vegetables and, with the flour, forms the base roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked in fat and stock, giving it body.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base that gives the sauce its main flavour and body.
Ham or bacon
Adds smoky, savoury flavour that carries through the long simmer.
Tomato
Adds acidity and colour, balancing the richness of the stock and roux.
Sherry
Adds aromatic sweetness and acidity at the end, brightening the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour until golden brown. Cooking the flour in fat browns it and develops nutty flavour while it thickens. Undercooked flour tastes raw and pasty, while overcooked flour loses thickening power and turns bitter.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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