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Sauce Espagnol

A classic French brown sauce made with butter, flour, carrot, onion, stock, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Sauce Espagnol

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the carrot, onion, bay leaf, thyme, and peppercorns.

  3. Cook until the butter is browned.

  4. Stir in the flour and cook until well browned.

Build the sauce

  1. Gradually add the brown stock and meat extract, bringing to a boil.

  2. Strain the sauce.

  3. Add lemon juice, chopped parsley, and the remaining tablespoon of butter bit by bit.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt to taste.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the roux and adds richness and a glossy finish when whisked in at the end.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce when cooked with the butter as a roux.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, providing savoury body and flavour.
Meat extract
Adds concentrated savoury depth to the brown stock.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the roux until well browned. Browning the flour and butter develops nutty, toasted flavour and colour, but if it burns it turns bitter. Cook it gently and watch closely.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, carrot, meat, lemon, thyme, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, carrot, meat, lemon, thyme, parsley. 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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