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Sauce

Espagnole

A rich brown sauce made with butter, eschalots, ham, carrot, herbs, spices, and veal stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Espagnole

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a thick saucepan over moderate heat.

  2. Add the sliced eschalots, ham, diced carrot, bay leaf, parsley, thyme, cloves, mace, and peppercorns.

  3. Stir the mixture gently for 20 minutes.

  4. Gradually add the veal stock or gravy and simmer gently for 30 to 40 minutes.

  5. Strain the sauce and skim off the fat before serving.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 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. Carrot + thymetop 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
Carries the aromatics and adds richness and flavour as they soften.
Eschalots
Soften and sweeten as they cook, building the savoury base of the sauce.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth that seasons the sauce from within.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and body to the flavour base.
Veal stock or gravy
Forms the liquid body of the sauce and carries its gelatin and flavour.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture gently for 20 minutes. Gentle stirring softens the vegetables and ham slowly in the butter so they release flavour without browning or scorching. Hard heat or rushing can burn the solids and leave a bitter, dark taste that carries into the finished sauce.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, ham, carrot, thyme, clove, mace, veal):

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Winter savoryfits about as well
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, carrot, thyme, clove, mace, veal. 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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