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Brown Sauce

A savory sauce made with onion, butter, flour, port wine, soy sauce, walnut ketchup, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Brown Sauce

Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the onion in butter and flour until brown.

  2. Simmer the mixture in port wine.

  3. Add soy sauce, walnut ketchup, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Strain the sauce and thicken it with melted butter.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

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
Provides savory depth and sweetness as it browns in the butter.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and helps form a roux with the butter.
Port wine
Adds body, sweetness and fruity acidity to the simmered sauce.
Butter
Carries flavor for frying and enriches the sauce when used to thicken it.

The step that matters

Fry the onion in butter and flour until brown. Browning the flour and onion builds the roux's color and nutty flavor. Stopping too early leaves a pale, floury taste, while overcooking can scorch and turn the sauce bitter.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, port wine, sauce, walnut, ketchup, pepper. 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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