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Sauce

Spanish Sauce

A thickened beef and ham sauce flavored with thyme, parsley, bay leaf, carrot, onion, mace, peppercorns, and optional madeira or sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Spanish Sauce

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Spanish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter.

  2. Add the beef, veal, and ham.

  3. Pour in enough stock to cover the bottom and boil until thick.

  4. Simmer until brightly colored, being careful not to burn.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add thyme, parsley, bay leaf, carrot, onion, mace, peppercorns, shallots, and stock or water.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour, then strain and cool.

Finish the sauce

  1. Remove fat from the top, reheat, and thicken with brown thickening until creamy.

  2. Remove any rising fat and add ⅓ cup of madeira or sherry if desired.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 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

Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavor as the meat browns.
Beef or veal
Provides meaty flavor and gelatin that gives body to the sauce.
Lean ham
Adds savory, salty depth to the stock base.
Brown thickening (in the method)
Thickens the sauce to a creamy consistency once the fat is removed.

The step that matters

Simmer until brightly colored, being careful not to burn. Browning the meat and vegetables builds color and flavor through the Maillard reaction, but scorched proteins and sugars turn bitter and dark, spoiling the sauce.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beef, ham, thyme, parsley, carrot, onion):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, ham, thyme, parsley, carrot, onion. 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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