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Sauce Bordelaise

A French sauce made with onions, butter, white wine, Espagnole sauce, parsley, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauce Bordelaise

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a hot saucepan, combine chopped onions, butter, white pepper, and salt.

  2. Add white wine and reduce by boiling to ¼ cup.

  3. Stir in sauce Espagnole or dark beef gravy and boil for a few moments.

  4. Mix in chopped parsley and capers, then serve.

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. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and reduces to concentrate flavour into the sauce.
Sauce espagnole or dark beef gravy
Provides the body and savoury base of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
White onions
Contribute aromatic sweetness and depth as they soften in the pan.

The step that matters

Reducing the wine to ¼ cup. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the wine's acidity and aroma. Stopping too early leaves the sauce thin and sharp; reducing too far makes it sticky and overly intense.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, white wine, sauce, parsley, capers):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, white wine, sauce, parsley, capers. 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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