Skip to main content
Main

Onion Sauce, Brown, Piquant

A brown onion sauce made with onions, gravy, flour, salt, sugar, tarragon vinegar, sherry, and optional dry mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tarragon and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Onion Sauce, Brown, Piquant

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the onions until tender.

  2. Mix the gravy with the flour until smooth.

  3. Pour the gravy mixture over the onions.

  4. Add salt, sugar, tarragon vinegar, and sherry.

  5. Stir the sauce over gentle heat for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the sauce and serve hot.

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. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Provide the main body and sweet, savoury flavour of the sauce as they soften.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the gravy so the sauce coats the back of a spoon.
Sherry
Adds depth and aroma to the sauce as it simmers.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich onion and gravy flavours.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce over gentle heat for 10 minutes. Gentle heat keeps the flour-thickened sauce smooth and prevents it from scorching or sticking to the pan. Vigorous boiling can cause lumps or a burnt taste.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, flour, sugar, tarragon, vinegar, sherry):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, flour, sugar, tarragon, vinegar, sherry. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes