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Brown Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, stock, pepper, salt, mushroom catsup, Worcestershire sauce, and caramel for browning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Brown Sauce

Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over high heat.

  2. Stir in the flour until well mixed.

  3. Gradually add the hot stock, stirring continuously.

  4. Season with pepper and salt.

  5. Add the mushroom catsup and Worcestershire sauce.

  6. Bring to a boil for 2 minutes.

  7. Add a few drops of caramel for browning.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Fat that combines with flour to form a roux, giving the sauce richness.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot stock.
Hot stock
Liquid base that hydrates the flour and forms the body of the sauce.
Mushroom catsup
Adds savory, umami depth to the sauce.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds tangy, savory flavor that rounds out the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the hot stock, stirring continuously. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour dispersed, so lumps do not form and the sauce thickens smoothly as the starch swells.

“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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