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Bordelaise Sauce

A sauce made by simmering lean ham, garlic, claret, brown sauce, spices, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Bordelaise Sauce

Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Bordelaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mince the ham very finely.

  2. Boil the ham with the brown sauce, claret, two cloves, mace, cayenne, and garlic.

  3. When one-fourth has boiled away, strain into another saucepan.

  4. Let it stand for a few minutes, skim off the fat, and add the lemon juice.

  5. Boil gently and skim once more.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Garlic + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + hamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,666 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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 that deepens the sauce as it reduces.
Brown sauce
Forms the savoury base and body of the sauce.
Ham
Contributes savoury, meaty flavour to the sauce as it simmers.
Lemon juice
Adds brightness that balances the richness of the reduced sauce.

The step that matters

Boil gently and skim once more. Vigorous boiling can break up fat and cloud the sauce, and fat left on the surface makes it greasy. Gentle heat lets the fat rise so it can be skimmed off cleanly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, garlic, ham, lemon, sauce):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, garlic, ham, lemon, sauce. 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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