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Sauce Bordelaise

A French sauce made with onions, butter, wine, beef gravy, 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

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a hot saucepan.

  2. Add the chopped onions, white pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Pour in the wine.

  4. Reduce the mixture by boiling until it reaches ¼ cup.

  5. Add the dark beef gravy and boil for a few moments.

  6. Stir in the chopped parsley and capers gently.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce warm.

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 + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour as it reduces into the sauce.
Beef gravy
Provides body, savoury richness and the main liquid of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounded, silky mouthfeel to the sauce base.
White onions
Contribute aromatic sweetness and savoury flavour as they soften in the butter.

The step that matters

Reduce the wine to ¼ cup. Boiling the wine down concentrates its acidity and flavour. Stopping too early leaves the sauce thin and sharp, while over-reducing makes it too salty and intense once the gravy is added.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, wine, beef, 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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