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Sauce

Sauce Bordelaise

A rich red wine sauce with shallots, herbs, and glaze, simmered until thick enough to coat a spoon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sauce Bordelaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine claret and shallots in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Add Espagnole sauce and glaze, then simmer gently for about 25 minutes.

  3. If the sauce is too thick, add a little stock; if too thin, boil with the lid off.

Finish

  1. Skim well, then add the chopped herbs and season carefully.

  2. Do not strain 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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Shallot + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Espagnole sauce
Provides the thickened brown sauce base that gives body and savoury depth.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour as it reduces into the sauce.
Glaze
Adds concentrated meaty flavour and gloss, deepening the sauce's savouriness.
Shallot
Contributes mild aromatic sweetness that softens as it cooks in the wine.

The step that matters

Simmering and thickness adjustment. Simmering gently reduces the sauce and concentrates flavour. Boiling hard can make it reduce too fast or turn bitter, so adjust thickness slowly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, shallot, gelatin, tarragon, chervil, pepper, sugar):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Fennelfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, shallot, gelatin, tarragon, chervil, pepper, 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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