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Sauce

Demi-glace Sauce

A rich sauce made from Espagnole, gravy, bacon, butter, vegetables, flour, stock, seasonings, tomato pulp, and sherry, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Demi-glace Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Combine the Espagnole sauce and gravy in a saucepan and reduce for five minutes.

  2. Strain and reheat the mixture.

Build the flavor and simmer

  1. Melt the bacon in a pan with the butter.

  2. Add the sliced vegetables and fry well.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook until a rich brown color is achieved.

  4. Add the stock and seasonings, then simmer for two to three hours.

  5. In the last half hour of cooking, add the tomato pulp.

  6. Finish by adding sherry and reheating the sauce.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sauce + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Tomato + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together492 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Espagnole sauce
Provides the classic brown sauce base that the demi-glace is built on.
Gravy
Concentrates meaty flavor and adds body to the reduced sauce.
Bacon
Renders fat and adds smoky, savory depth to the sauce.
Flour
Browned in fat, it thickens the sauce and adds toasty flavor.
Butter
Carries the bacon and vegetables and adds richness to the sauce.
Tomato pulp
Adds acidity and color, balancing the richness of the brown sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Cooking the flour until a rich brown color develops builds the nutty, roasted flavor of the sauce. Stopping too early leaves a raw, pasty taste, while going too far turns it bitter.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, meat, butter, flour, sherry):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, meat, butter, flour, sherry. 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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