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Sauce

Sauce Bobdelaiss

A French sauce made with shallots, red wine, thyme, bay leaf, half-glaze, meat glaze, lemon juice, and beef marrow.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sauce Bobdelaiss

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a vegetable pan, combine shallots, red wine, mignonette pepper, thyme, and bay leaf.

  2. Reduce the wine by three-quarters over medium heat.

  3. Add half-glaze and simmer for 30 minutes, removing scum as needed.

  4. Strain the sauce through linen or a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, stir in dissolved meat glaze, lemon juice, and poached beef marrow.

  2. Optionally, add butter for a smoother sauce.

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. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Red wine
Provides acidity and aromatic flavour that is concentrated as the wine reduces.
Half-glaze
Adds body and savoury depth as the sauce simmers.
Dissolved meat glaze
Adds concentrated savoury flavour and body to the finished sauce.
Beef marrow
Adds richness and a soft, fatty texture to the finished sauce.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the sauce a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Reduce the wine by three-quarters. Reducing the wine concentrates its acidity and aromatics so they carry through the sauce. Stopping too early leaves the sauce thin and sharp.

“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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