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Sauce

Brown Onion Sauce, or Onion Gravy

A savory sauce made from onions, butter, flour, broth, wine, and mushroom ketchup, served with steaks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Brown Onion Sauce, or Onion Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. In a quart saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the sliced onions and cook until lightly browned.

  3. Gradually stir in the flour.

  4. Add the broth, pepper, and salt; bring to a boil for a few minutes.

  5. Stir in the Claret or Port wine and mushroom ketchup.

Finish and serve

  1. Rub the sauce through a fine sieve.

  2. For steaks, add fried onions or whole boiled young onions 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Port wine + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together570 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Onions
Soften and brown to give the gravy its sweet, deep flavor base.
Butter
Carries the onions' flavor and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, cohesive gravy.
Broth
Forms the liquid body of the gravy and carries the seasonings.
Claret or port wine
Adds acidity and depth that rounds out the savory flavor.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the flour. Adding flour all at once to hot fat can form lumps that are hard to smooth out. Stirring it in gradually lets the starch coat the fat and disperse evenly before the liquid goes in, giving a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, flour, pepper, port wine, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Red currantfits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, pepper, port wine, mushroom, ketchup. 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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