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Espagnole or Brown Sauce

A rich brown sauce made with vegetables, meat, stock, tomato, wine, and flour.

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

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,053 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Espagnole or Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock base

  1. Combine carrot, onion, beef or veal, ham or bacon, parsley, celery, bay leaf, peppercorns, mace, savory herbs, and butter in a stew-pan.

  2. Cook over high heat until light brown.

  3. Strain off the fat.

  4. Add the stock, tomato conserve, and red wine, and allow to simmer for 1 hour.

  5. Strain the prepared stock.

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter or dripping in another stew-pan.

  2. Add the tomato sauce and flour.

  3. Stir over low heat until brown.

  4. Place in the oven to brown slowly.

Finish the sauce

  1. Skim well.

  2. Gradually add the strained stock to the browned flour mixture.

  3. Stir until it boils.

  4. Let simmer for 20 minutes or more.

  5. If too thick, add a little more stock.

  6. Season to taste.

  7. Skim.

  8. Strain.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,092 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

Flour
Thickens the sauce when browned with fat, giving body and a nutty flavour.
Butter or dripping
Fat that carries flavour and helps the flour brown into the roux.
Beef or veal
Adds meaty depth and savoury flavour to the stock.
Tomato conserve
Adds sweetness and acidity, rounding out the sauce's colour and flavour.
Onion
Browns and adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the roux thickens into a sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour mixture. Flour must be cooked slowly over low heat until evenly brown; stopping early leaves a raw starchy taste, while overheating scorches it and makes the sauce bitter.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, beef, ham, parsley, celery, butter):

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  3. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, beef, ham, parsley, celery, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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