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Sauce Espagnole

A brown sauce made from diced ham and veal simmered with stock, herbs, and onions, thickened with roux and finished with sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Chive and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 450 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Sauce Espagnole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Cut the ham and veal into small dice.

  2. Combine the ham, veal, and 1½ cups of stock in a stewpan.

  3. Simmer gently until a glaze forms on the bottom of the pan.

  4. Add another ½ cup of stock and stir to detach the glaze from the pan.

  5. Add the herbs, onions, and remaining stock.

  6. Cover and simmer gently for 2 hours.

  7. Strain the sauce and skim off all fat.

Thicken and finish

  1. Prepare a brown roux (see separate recipe) using about 1 tablespoon of roux for every 2 cups of gravy.

  2. Remove the roux from heat and add the hot gravy, stirring until smooth.

  3. Boil for about 2 minutes.

  4. Finally, stir in the sherry and add cayenne if desired.

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. Chive + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 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

Veal
Breaks down during long simmering to give the sauce body and savoury depth.
Ham
Releases savoury flavour and fat into the stock, building the sauce's richness.
Stock
Forms the liquid base and, reduced to a glaze, carries the sauce's flavour.
Flour
Forms the brown roux that thickens the gravy into a smooth, glossy sauce.
Butter
Fat in the roux that coats flour particles so the sauce thickens without lumps.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich, long-cooked sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the hot gravy into the roux. Adding hot liquid to a roux all at once or unevenly causes lumps, because flour clumps before it disperses. Stirring steadily while adding the gravy keeps the starch evenly suspended so it thickens smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, parsley, thyme, chive, shallot, clove):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, parsley, thyme, chive, shallot, clove. 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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