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Espagnole or Thick Brown Sauce

A rich brown sauce made by simmering veal with onions, stock, herbs, and thickening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 9,057 recipes mention both. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Espagnole or Thick Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Cover the bottom of a stewpan with halved onions.

  2. Add the chopped veal and 2 cups of water.

  3. Simmer gently for 1.5 hours until dark brown.

Make the sauce

  1. Add 8 cups of White Stock.

  2. Garnish with parsley, thyme, bay leaves, shallots, carrots, onions, and mushrooms.

  3. Simmer for 1 hour.

  4. Strain through a cloth.

  5. Add 2 ounces of Brown Thickening for each quart of stock.

  6. Boil the sauce.

Finish and skim

  1. Strain through a sieve.

  2. Return the sauce to the stewpan.

  3. Simmer until the butter rises.

  4. Skim off the fat.

  5. Add more White Stock as needed.

  6. Simmer for another 30 minutes.

  7. Skim off any greasy parts.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,737 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle
Collagen breaks down into gelatin during long simmering, giving the sauce body and a silky mouthfeel.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the flavour of the other ingredients.
Brown thickening
Starch and browned flour thicken the stock so the sauce coats the back of a spoon.
Onions
Caramelised during the long simmer, they add sweetness and deep colour to the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy, savoury depth to the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat and greasy parts. Fat from the veal and stock rises to the surface and can make the sauce greasy and cloudy. Removing it during simmering keeps the sauce clean-tasting and smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, parsley, thyme, shallot, carrot, mushroom):

  1. Leekbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  3. Chivebetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, parsley, thyme, shallot, carrot, mushroom. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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