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Sauce

Sauce Bordelaise

A sauce made from shallots, onion, garlic, olive oil, Bordeaux wine, and marrow, simmered until reduced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Sauce Bordelaise

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mince the shallots, onion, and garlic.

  2. Cook them slowly in olive oil for a few minutes.

  3. Add the Bordeaux wine, salt, and pepper, and cook until reduced by half.

  4. Stir in the melted marrow with a wooden spoon.

  5. When the sauce boils, move the pan to a cooler part and cook slowly for 15 minutes.

  6. Serve very hot.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Shallots
Soften and sweeten as they cook slowly in oil, adding aromatic depth to the sauce.
Bordeaux wine
Reduces to concentrate flavor and provides acidity and fruity body.
Marrow
Melted into the sauce to add richness and fat, giving it a rounder texture.

The step that matters

Cook slowly after the sauce boils. Once the sauce boils, moving it to a cooler part of the pan and simmering gently keeps it from scorching or breaking. Gentle heat lets flavors meld while the wine's sharpness mellows.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, onion, garlic, olive, wine, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, onion, garlic, olive, wine, 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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