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Sauce Bordelaise- -bordeaux Sauce

A rich red wine sauce with shallots, thyme, bay leaf, brown sauce, veal gravy, finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,476 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sauce Bordelaise- -bordeaux Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, reduce the claret with shallots, thyme, and bay leaf.

  2. Add the Brown Sauce and brown veal gravy, and reduce to a good consistency.

  3. Strain the sauce and finish by stirring in the sweet 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.

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. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Shallot + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Thyme + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,758 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour as it reduces, deepening the sauce's character.
Shallots
Add a mild aromatic sweetness that builds the sauce's base flavour during reduction.
Brown sauce
Provides the body and savoury depth that forms the sauce's foundation.
Brown veal gravy
Adds richness and gelatin-driven body, thickening the sauce as it reduces.
Sweet butter
Stirred in at the end to add gloss, silky texture and a rounder flavour.

The step that matters

Reducing to a good consistency. Reducing concentrates flavour and thickens the sauce, but over-reducing makes it too salty and stiff, while under-reducing leaves it thin. Stop when it coats the back of a spoon.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, sauce, veal, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, sauce, veal, butter. 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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