Skip to main content
Main

Soubise Sauce, Brown

A brown onion sauce made with onions, butter, flour, veal or beef gravy, and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Soubise Sauce, Brown

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and wash the onions, then mince them.

Cook and finish the sauce

  1. Fry the minced onions in a stewpan with a little butter until very brown.

  2. Moisten with Spanish sauce, or sprinkle with flour mixed with veal or beef gravy.

  3. Skim off the fat, then season the puree with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve to remove onion pieces.

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. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

  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

Onions
Browning them builds sweetness and deep savoury flavour, and they form the puree that becomes the sauce.
Butter
Fat for frying that carries flavour and helps the onions brown.
Flour
Thickens the sauce, giving it body when mixed with gravy.
Veal or beef gravy
Adds savoury meat flavour and liquid to the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the onions until very brown. Onions must be browned, not just softened. Browning through the Maillard reaction and caramelization builds the deep, sweet flavour the sauce depends on. Stir often so they colour evenly without scorching.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, veal, 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.

You might also like

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes