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Sauce Bordelaise

A French sauce made with onion, beef gravy, wine, pepper, salt, parsley, and browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sauce Bordelaise

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pan, brown the finely chopped onion in fat or butter.

  2. Add the beef gravy and wine to the pan.

  3. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and parsley.

  4. Allow the mixture to simmer.

  5. Thicken the sauce with a little browned flour.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  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

Onion
Browned in fat, it builds deep savory flavor and sweetness as the base of the sauce.
Beef gravy
Provides the main body and meaty savory flavor of the sauce.
Claret or white wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that balances the rich gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the sauce and adds a nutty, toasted flavor.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with browned flour. Flour needs to be added in small amounts and simmered so it hydrates and cooks out its raw taste. Adding too much at once creates lumps or a pasty texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, white wine, pepper, parsley, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, white wine, pepper, parsley, flour. 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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