Skip to main content
Sauce

Espagnole, with Wine

A brown sauce made from stewed mushrooms, flour, veal gravy, Madeira or sherry, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mushroom and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,176 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Espagnole, with Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the mushrooms gently in a stewpan until they are reddish all around.

  2. Stir in the flour and lightly brown it.

  3. Add the veal gravy in small portions, letting each one boil before adding the next, shaking the pan well.

  4. After 30 minutes of gentle boiling, add cayenne and salt if needed.

  5. Strain the sauce and skim off any fat.

Serve

  1. 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. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Mushroom + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Browned with the mushrooms, it thickens the sauce as it cooks with the gravy.
Veal gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body and savoury depth.
Madeira or sherry
Adds aromatic sweetness and acidity that rounds out the richness of the gravy.
Mushrooms
Release and absorb flavour during gentle frying, adding earthy aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the veal gravy. Adding gravy all at once can cause lumps as the flour does not disperse evenly. Adding it in small portions and letting each boil before the next keeps the sauce smooth and lets the starch thicken properly.

“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.

More espagnole sauce recipes

with Wine 4 See all 64 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes