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Espagnol Sauce

A savory sauce made with carrot, onion, turnip, tomatoes, mushrooms, herbs, ham, stock, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Espagnol Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash and scrape the carrot and turnip.

  2. Slice the onion and mushrooms.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the clarified dripping in a saucepan.

  2. Add the vegetables and fry gently until nicely colored.

  3. Stir in the flour.

  4. Add the sliced tomatoes, herbs, peppercorns, castor sugar, and brown stock.

  5. Stir continually until boiling.

  6. Simmer gently for about an hour until the sauce coats the spoon.

  7. Rub the sauce through a fine sieve or tammy.

Finish and serve

  1. Return to the saucepan to reheat.

  2. Add the sherry or madeira and lemon juice.

  3. Stir in a small piece of butter just before serving.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the stock, giving it body.
Brown stock
Provides the liquid base and most of the sauce's savoury flavour.
Clarified dripping
Carries the frying of the vegetables and adds richness to the sauce.
Onion
Browns during frying to build colour and deep savoury flavour.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body that balance the richness of the sauce.
Sherry or madeira
Adds aroma and a sweet, wine-based depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stir continually until boiling. Flour settles and scorches on the bottom of the pan if left still, and the sauce can lump or taste burnt. Constant stirring keeps the flour dispersed so it thickens smoothly as the stock heats.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, turnip, tomato, mushroom, ham, sugar):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Cherryfits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, turnip, tomato, mushroom, ham, sugar. 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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