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Hungarian Sauce

A sauce made with onions, butter, paprika, white wine, herbs, velouté, and finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Hungarian Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Gently fry the chopped onions in butter without coloring them.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and paprika.

  3. Moisten with white wine and add the bundle of herbs.

  4. Reduce the wine by two-thirds and remove the herbs.

  5. Add the velouté sauce and boil moderately for five minutes.

  6. Rub the sauce through a fine sieve.

  7. Finish by stirring in the butter until melted.

  8. Ensure the sauce maintains a delicate pink shade.

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. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + white winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,535 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Softened gently in butter, they build a sweet, savory aromatic base for the sauce.
White wine
Reduced down to add acidity and a bright, concentrated flavor to the sauce.
Velouté sauce
Forms the body of the sauce, giving it its main structure and creamy texture.
Butter
Stirred in at the end to add richness, smoothness and a glossy finish.
Paprika
Provides the pink color and a mild, sweet peppery aroma.

The step that matters

Ensure the sauce maintains a delicate pink shade.. Paprika color fades and turns dull when overheated or boiled too long, so the sauce should be kept at a gentle simmer and finished promptly to preserve its pink tint.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, sauce, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, sauce, butter. 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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