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Espagnole Sauce

A rich brown sauce made from braised beef and veal bones, ham, vegetables, herbs, and stock, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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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 ↓

Espagnole Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Braise the beef and veal bones with the ham knuckle until browned.

  2. Slice the carrots, turnip, and onions.

  3. Add them to the pot.

Build the sauce

  1. Add celery, parsley, bay leaves, cloves, allspice, and sweet herbs.

  2. Stir in enough flour to thicken the sauce.

  3. Gradually moisten with good stock.

  4. Add any gravies you have.

  5. Add a few tomatoes.

Simmer and finish

  1. Let simmer slowly for several hours.

  2. Strain the sauce.

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

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef bones
Browned bones give deep, savory flavor and body to the sauce base.
Veal bones
Release gelatin during long simmering, adding body and a silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it is stirred into the hot liquid.
Good stock
Forms the main liquid that extracts flavor and dissolves gelatin from the bones.
Onions
Sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften and brown with the bones.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aromatic background to the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour before moistening with stock. Flour must be cooked into the fat and browned bits so it thickens smoothly. Adding it to hot liquid unevenly can form lumps, and adding too much makes the sauce pasty.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, ham, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, ham, carrot, turnip, celery, 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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