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Sauce

Onion-sauce

A savory sauce made with onion, butter, flour, port wine, water, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Onion-sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

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

  2. Add the chopped onion and cook until it begins to brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook until it is brown.

  4. Gradually add the port wine and boiling water, stirring continuously.

  5. Add the salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and bring the sauce to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Keep the sauce hot until ready to serve.

  2. When the birds are done, mix the drippings into the sauce and serve hot.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Onion or shallot
Softens and browns in the butter, adding sweetness and savory depth to the sauce.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavor and gives the sauce richness.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the liquid, giving it body.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, acidity and fruity flavor, and deglazes the pan with the liquid.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and browning it. Flour must cook in the fat long enough to lose its raw taste, but if it burns it turns bitter. Stir constantly and watch the color while adding the liquid gradually to avoid lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, port wine, pepper, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, port wine, pepper, nutmeg. 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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