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Brown Sauce

A thickened meat broth made with onions, ham, beef, veal, turnips, carrots, mace, herbs, and roux.

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

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,002 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Peel and cut the onions in half, placing them in a stewpan with butter.

  2. Layer the ham, beef, and veal on top of the onions.

  3. Fry over high heat until the bottom is lightly browned.

  4. Remove from heat, cover with ashes, and let it sit for 30 minutes, stirring twice.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add water, turnips, carrots, mace, and herbs; bring to a boil.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then simmer for 2 hours, skimming fat and adding cold water as needed.

  3. Skim the liquid, thicken with roux diluted in hot water, and strain through a fine sieve.

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

  1. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together6,606 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
Caramelised sweetness and deep colour as the base flavour of the sauce.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth and meaty flavour to the stock.
Leg of beef
Contributes meaty flavour and body to the long-simmered liquid.
Veal
Adds gelatin-rich body and a mild, rounded meat flavour.
Roux
Thickens the strained liquid to give the sauce its body.

The step that matters

Frying the onions and meats until the bottom browns. Browning builds deep colour and flavour through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Pale frying yields a weaker, washed-out sauce, and scorching would make it bitter.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Celerybetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, ham, beef, veal, turnip, carrot. 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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