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Spanish Sauce

A savory sauce made with onion, garlic, truffle or mushrooms, ham, stock, butter, flour, Madeira, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Spanish Sauce

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Spanish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine sliced onion, garlic, truffle (or mushrooms), mace, bay leaves, ham, shallots, thyme, and parsley in a saucepan.

  2. Add butter and stock.

  3. Simmer over low heat until the stock is reduced.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir in flour to absorb the butter, cooking for 1-2 minutes.

  2. Pour in Madeira and enough coulis for desired sauce consistency.

  3. Boil for a few minutes.

  4. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve back into the saucepan to heat.

  5. Add lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and sugar to taste.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Garlic + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,608 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, and the flour is cooked into it to thicken.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked in the butter to form a roux.
Madeira
Adds a rich, sweet, fortified wine flavour that deepens the sauce as it reduces.
Coulis
Sets the body and consistency of the sauce as it is added and boiled.
Spanish onion
Provides savoury sweetness and aromatic depth as it cooks slowly in the base.

The step that matters

Stir in flour to absorb the butter. Flour must cook for a minute or two in the butter so its raw starch taste fades and it thickens smoothly. Adding liquid too soon, or skipping the cooking, leaves lumps and a floury flavour.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, garlic, truffle, ham, shallot, thyme):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, garlic, truffle, ham, shallot, thyme. 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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