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Bordelaise Sauce

A sauce made with butter, onion, carrot, parsley, bay leaves, peppercorns, cloves, flour, soup stock, Claret wine, and butter, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Bordelaise Sauce

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Bordelaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the onion, carrots, parsley, bay leaves, peppercorns, and cloves; cook until browned.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook until well-browned.

  4. Gradually add the soup stock, stirring continuously.

  5. Strain the mixture and simmer for a few minutes.

  6. Add the Claret wine and butter, then season with salt and pepper.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and stock.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness and a glossy finish.
Claret wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Soup stock
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and cook until well-browned. Cooking flour in fat until browned removes its raw taste and builds nutty flavour and colour. Undercooked flour leaves the sauce pasty and floury, while the stock must then be added gradually and stirred constantly so the starch disperses without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, parsley, clove, flour, wine, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, parsley, clove, flour, wine, 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.

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