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Sauce

Espagnole, with Wine

A mushroom-based brown sauce made with veal gravy, Madeira or sherry, and seasoned with cayenne pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,176 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Espagnole, with Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the mushrooms gently in a stewpan until they are reddish all around.

  2. Stir in the flour and lightly brown it.

  3. Add the veal gravy in small portions, letting each boil before adding the next. Shake the pan well after each addition.

  4. After 30 minutes of gentle boiling, add cayenne and salt if needed.

  5. Strain the sauce and skim off any fat.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Mushroom + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Browned in the pan, it thickens the sauce and adds a nutty flavour.
Veal gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and gives it savoury body.
Madeira or sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic sweetness that round out the savoury base.
Mushrooms
Browned in the pan, they add earthy savour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the veal gravy in small portions. Adding gravy gradually and letting each portion boil before the next lets the flour and fat bind smoothly, preventing lumps and a thin, uneven sauce.

“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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