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Sauce

Brown Sauce for Gravy

A brown sauce made with butter, onions, flour, stock, port wine, catsup, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brown Sauce for Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Fry the sliced onions until they are light brown.

  3. Gradually stir in the flour, then add the stock, pepper, and salt.

  4. Boil for a few minutes, then strain through a sieve.

  5. Stir in the port wine and catsup.

  6. Add a little lemon juice or vinegar for a sharper flavor, if desired.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the onion frying and adds richness to the sauce.
Onions
Browning in the pan builds the sauce's deep color and savory sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into gravy.
Port wine
Adds depth and a fruity, rich aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until light brown. Onions cooked too briefly stay pale and sweet-tasting, while over-browning turns them bitter. Gentle, even frying develops the sugars that give the sauce its color and flavor.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, port wine, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, port wine, pepper. 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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