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Espagnole Sauce

A classic French brown sauce made with butter, aromatics, flour, stock, tomatoes, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Espagnole Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced carrot, onion, and peppercorns; cook until light brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and let it brown slightly.

  4. Add the tied herbs and celery seeds, then pour in the stock.

  5. Stir until boiling, then add the chopped tomatoes and sherry.

  6. Allow to boil gently for about 30 minutes.

  7. Season with salt and strain through a fine strainer or tammy cloth.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce and, once browned, adds a nutty color and flavor.
Butter
Carries the vegetables' flavor and adds richness to the sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the sauce reduces and thickens in.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, balancing the richness of the roux and stock.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished sauce.
Onion
Provides sweetness and savory depth as it cooks to light brown.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour that is browned too little leaves a raw, pasty taste, while over-browning turns it bitter. Cook it slowly and stir constantly until it is a light, even brown before adding liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, celery, flour, tomato, sherry):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, celery, flour, tomato, sherry. 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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