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Onion Sauce

A savory sauce made from caramelized onions, butter, beef gravy, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and slice the onions.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the onions.

  3. Stir over medium heat until the onions are light brown.

Make the sauce

  1. Dust the onions with flour, then add the beef gravy and cayenne pepper.

  2. Simmer until the sauce thickens.

  3. Rub the mixture through a colander or sieve.

  4. Just before serving, squeeze in the juice of the lemon.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Browned slowly in butter, they build the sweet, savoury base of the sauce.
Butter
Fat that carries the onion flavour and helps the onions brown.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the sauce as it simmers with the gravy.
Beef gravy
Forms the liquid body of the sauce and adds meaty savouriness.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the onions until light brown. Onions cooked gently until golden develop sweetness and depth, while cooking too fast can scorch them and leave a bitter taste that carries into the sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, beef, pepper):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Mangofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Limefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, beef, pepper. 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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