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Brown Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, onion, carrot, lemon juice, stock, clove, salt, and pepper.

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

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter in a pan over low heat.

  2. Cook the vegetables for 30 minutes.

  3. Increase the heat and cook the vegetables until slightly browned, stirring constantly.

  4. Add the flour.

  5. Stir until it is also browned.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the pan from heat and let it cool slightly.

  2. Add the stock and stir until well mixed.

  3. Add the clove, salt, and pepper.

  4. Return the pan to low heat and let it simmer for 20 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the sauce.

  2. Skim off any fat.

  3. Add the lemon juice.

  4. 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.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that carries flavor and helps the flour brown evenly into a roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot fat and liquid.
Onion and carrot
Sweet, savory base flavor that deepens as the vegetables brown.
Stock
Liquid that becomes the body of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, browned flavors.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Stirring the flour in the fat until it is browned develops a nutty, deeper flavor and color. Too little browning leaves the sauce pale and floury, while too much scorches and tastes bitter, so constant stirring over moderate heat is needed.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, carrot, lemon, clove, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, carrot, lemon, clove, 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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