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Lyonaise Sauce

A sauce made with onion, butter, tomato pulp, vinegar, sugar, glaze, pepper, and salt, served with mutton cutlets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lyonaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Slice the onion.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter and add the onion. Simmer until soft.

  3. Stir in the tomato pulp, vinegar, sugar, glaze, pepper, and salt. Bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Tomato + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together498 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Softens and sweetens as it simmers, forming the body of the sauce.
Butter
Carries the onion in fat, adding richness and helping it soften gently.
Tomato pulp
Provides acidity, colour and body to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the sweetness and richness of the sauce.
Sugar
Rounds out the acidity of the tomato and vinegar with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Simmer the onion until soft. Onion cooked gently in butter until soft releases sugars and mellows its sharpness. Rushing it over high heat can brown or scorch the onion, giving a bitter taste to the finished sauce.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, tomato, vinegar, sugar, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, tomato, vinegar, sugar, 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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