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Brown Onion Sauces, or Onion Gravy

A savory sauce made from browned onions, butter, flour, broth, wine, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Sauces, or Onion Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Peel and slice the onions.

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

  3. Add the onions and cook until lightly browned, stirring occasionally.

  4. Gradually stir in the flour.

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

  6. Stir in the claret or port wine and mushroom ketchup.

  7. Optionally, add lemon juice or vinegar to taste.

  8. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. For a richer sauce, fry additional onions until brown and add them to the sauce.

  2. Alternatively, add boiled young button onions whole 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
Cook down to a lightly browned, sweet base that gives the gravy its flavour and body.
Butter
Adds fat and a rich flavour while cooking the onions.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth gravy as it cooks.
Broth or water
Forms the liquid that the flour thickens into the sauce.
Claret or port wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Cooking the onions until lightly browned. Browning the onions slowly over low heat develops sweet, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Pale onions give a flat gravy, while onions that burn turn bitter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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